The Collage

New Days

2011-07-22T09:48:00.004-05:00

We resurrected and renamed Sam Halser's Trifles blog for presenting the 3,000+ pages he wrote before going off to prison. We also have letters from Hasler.

Hasler wants to profusely apologize to friends, family and acquaintances for their embarrassment. More details in the future.

We will publish all this and more weekly. Stay tuned. Subscribe to our e-mail updates. Bookmark us. Add your comments.

Resquiat in Pace

2009-05-23T20:11:00.002-05:00

Personal reasons bring an end to Trifles. Thanks to all who subscribed and commented over it life. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Is this a surprise - Indiana manufacturing declines

2009-05-19T15:35:00.000-05:00

Indiana Manufacturing Jobs Drop Nearly 8 Percent According to Industrial Directory:

"The Directory reports Indiana suffered a 1% loss in manufacturing employment between 2005 and 2006, a loss of 2.4% between 2006 and 2007, and a 2.2% decline over the 2007-2008 survey period.

Manufacturers' News reports Indiana is now home to 10,748 manufacturers employing 610,491 workers.

'As with the entire nation, the recession continues to chip away at Indiana's core sectors. The auto industry has taken the greatest hit, while the faltering housing market has affected industries such as wood, furniture and building products,' says Tom Dubin, President of the Evanston, IL-based publishing company, which has been surveying industry since 1912.

MNI reports a quarter of the state's losses were felt in the auto industry, which tallied a loss of 12,814 jobs or 14.4% over the year following layoffs and closings at RV manufacturers and suppliers such as Monaco Coach Corp, Starcraft RV, Travel Supreme and Newmar Corp., as well as continuing cuts at the Big Three and their suppliers. The auto industry currently accounts for 73,364 jobs, while the transportation equipment sector as a whole employs 90,660. One bright spot in the auto sector was the opening of a new Honda plant in Greensburg that will be producing fuel-efficient vehicles."

GM - The Sahpe of Things to Come?

2009-05-18T14:15:00.001-05:00

Latest new courtesy of The Indianapolis Business Journal - Hubler of Shelbyville on GM closure list:

"Hubler Chevrolet Center Inc. of Shelbyville and several other General Motors dealerships in Indiana are on the chopping block after receiving notice Friday that their dealership agreements would not be renewed when they expire late next year.

But most dealers are keeping quiet about the notifications as they hold out hope they can persuade GM that they deserve to stay open.

Nationally, about 1,100 GM dealers have received notice. But unlike Chrysler LLC, which released a list Thursday of almost 800 dealers it plans to terminate, GM is keeping its list secret.

Joe Munson, vice president of Hubler Chevrolet told The Shelbyville News that he was surprised to receive the closing letter, particularly because of the strong sales his dealership has logged since opening in Shelbyville in 1988."

GM's Downsizing Strategy Moving With Great Efficiency comes from workforce.com:

"Employing the efficiency of an automotive assembly line, General Motors has laid off close to 3,400 salaried workers in recent months, moving individual employees from their desks and out the door in a half-hour’s time.
The GM layoffs are part of a last-ditch effort to “right-size” its workforce in order to avoid the kind of bankruptcy filed by Chrysler on Thursday, April 30.

Yet it looks like the latest round of layoffs is just that—the latest round, giving employees who remain at GM little relief.

May 1 marked a soft deadline for accomplishing the first round of layoffs. It also marked the beginning of a pay cut—3 to 10 percent, depending on a person’s rank—for many of the remaining 26,250 salaried workers in the U.S.

Now the company is looking to its next major deadline of June 1, when, according to a regulatory filing last week, GM said it would run out of cash unless it receives more financing and debt relief. In the filing, GM said it expected additional manpower reductions among its salaried workforce. The company also said it would trim its hourly workforce by 7,000 more than it had outlined in its first restructuring plan submitted February 17.

Then there was Experts say GM bankruptcy almost inevitable from The Muncie Star Press

To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 percent of its risky stock. On top of that, the automaker must work out deals with its union, announce factory closures, cut or sell brands and force hundreds of dealers out of business -- all in three weeks.

"I just don't see how it's possible, given all of the pieces," said Stephen J. Lubben, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who specializes in bankruptcy.

Meanwhile. Anderson's GM retirees shiver but not with anticipation.

What do you think of this?

2009-05-18T12:41:00.000-05:00

The Future of the American Dream from The Nation

"Here is the grand vision I suggest Americans can pursue: the right of all citizens to larger lives. Not to get richer than the next guy or necessarily to accumulate more and more stuff but the right to live life more fully and engage more expansively the elemental possibilities of human existence. That is the essence of what so many now seem to yearn for in their lives. People--even successful and affluent people--are frustrated because the intangible dimensions of life have been held back or displaced in large and small ways, pushed aside by the economic system's relentless demands to maximize yields of profit and wealth. Our common moral verities have been trashed in the name of greater returns. The softer aspects of mortal experience are diminished because life itself is not tabulated in the economic system's accounting."

Healthcare Roundup

2009-05-18T12:28:00.002-05:00

No one is happy about what is being done in Washington. That is the upshot of my reading. I say something is better than nothing.

Missing in Action on Healthcare?

Most of these elements are controversial. Former single-payer advocates, for instance, are banking on a public plan to open the door to a single-payer system. Insurers know that and are working overtime to make sure that doesn't happen. Aside from saying he supports a public plan, the president hasn't gotten his hands dirty in the political muck. Is he pursuing a conscious strategy to be above the fray or waiting to see what Congress does before jumping in? Is the president being strategically vague or abdicating to Congress because he, too, is feeling the heat from the special interests that contributed millions to his campaign?

Campaign rhetoric led the electorate to believe that a new president was ready to overhaul the healthcare system and bring health coverage to everyone. A poll released by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that there is strong support for health reform but that the public can be swayed on the details. "There is still a tremendous opportunity for leadership," says Kaiser CEO Drew Altman. But the special interests can still move the debate in one direction or another.

***

Money directed at health information technology in the stimulus package is not likely to bring down the cost of medical care; nor will preventive care, the much-touted disease-management programs or research into what medical interventions work. Earlier this year an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine by three respected healthcare experts, Theodore Marmor, Jonathan Oberlander and Joseph White, concluded that such reforms "sound like benign devices to moderate medical spending" and may be desirable for other reasons. But they are "ineffective as cost control measures." Serious cost containment--global budgeting, for instance, which sets a cap on what can be spent on healthcare by various sectors--is as far off of the table as single-payer.

"We do not know how to control health spending significantly," Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt told health journalists at their annual conference a few weeks ago. "The Obama administration must have the guts to force physicians to defend their high cost of spending. We could save 30 percent without hurting patients if they practiced medicine right." But the administration seems to be moving more in the direction of stopping the Medicare fee cuts already scheduled for doctors. The AMA was gleeful when the administration released its budget. President Nancy Nielsen said that the budget proposal "takes a huge step forward to ensure that physicians can care for seniors by rejecting planned Medicare physician payment cuts of 40 percent over the next decade."
***

If Obama wants to give more than lip service to a public plan, he should offer guidance on how it will work. Right now the term is loosely tossed around and means different things to different interest groups. But most ordinary people, if they understand it at all, believe it will enable them to chuck the coverage they have and choose cheaper and better coverage. If Massachusetts healthcare is a model, though, that's not likely. There, if residents have employer coverage and decline it because it's too expensive, they are barred from subsidized insurance. In other words, they don't have much of a choice. The reason: to keep people from "crowding out" private insurance; that is, taking away business from the private carriers. On May 4, New York Senator Charles Schumer stepped into the void and proposed " principles" that seem to answer some objections from insurers.

Right now it looks like the insurance industry has the upper hand in negotiations over a public plan. It will take a lot more voices and political muscle to nudge health reform to a point where it serves the needs of millions of Americans who are either shut out of the current system or have become its victims.

The Machinery Behind Health-Care Reform - washingtonpost.com

The inclusion of as much as $36.5 billion in spending to create a nationwide network of electronic health records fulfilled one of Obama's key campaign promises -- to launch the reform of America's costly health-care system.

But it was more than a political victory for the new administration. It also represented a triumph for an influential trade group whose members now stand to gain billions in taxpayer dollars.

A Washington Post review found that the trade group, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, had worked closely with technology vendors, researchers and other allies in a sophisticated, decade-long campaign to shape public opinion and win over Washington's political machinery.

***

Such an approach would rely on unprecedented data-mining into medical records and the practices of doctors, a kind of surveillance that also would enable insurers to cut costs by controlling more precisely the care that patients receive.

"Finally, we're going to have access to millions and millions of patient records online," said Blackford Middleton, a physician, Harvard professor and chairman of the Center for Information Technology Leadership, whose studies have concluded the health-care system could save $77.8 billion each year through the universal use of information technology networks. "This is the biggest step for health-care information technology in this country's history."

But others said the case was far from being so clear. Some observers said the projected savings are overly optimistic and that launching such vast computer networks under tight deadlines is risky, a lesson learned by the Bush administration when it botched a variety of homeland security systems rushed into place after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

***

The CBO, then led by Orszag, examined the industry-funded study behind the $77.8 billion assertion, among other things, and concluded that it relied on "overly optimistic" assumptions and said much is unknown about the potential impact of health information technology.

A CBO analysis of the stimulus bill this year projected that spending on electronic health records could yield perhaps $17 billion in savings over a decade.

GE Launches $6 Billion Plan to Develop Health Care Innovations

With the pace of health care reform quickening in Congress, General Electric came to Washington on Thursday, May 7, to launch a multibillion-dollar initiative it says will provide better health care at lower costs to more people—goals shared by many lawmakers.
The company also hopes the $6 billion program, dubbed “healthymagination,” will substantially boost its bottom line by fostering the growth of GE Healthcare.

During the next six years, GE plans to invest $3 billion in research and development to create at least 100 technologies and innovations it says will reduce the cost of medical procedures by 15 percent, increase access to health services by 15 percent and improve quality and efficiency by 15 percent. Another $3 billion will be allocated to improving coverage in rural and poor communities around the world.

How Dangerous is Obama's Red Ink

2009-05-18T09:05:00.001-05:00

Reading Robert J. Samuelson's Obama's Dangerous Debt and I have to wonder. I generally favor Samuelson but he does not offer any alternative. If we are to shore up our economy - which means the world's economy - what else can we do but what Obama proposes? Here is what Samuelson has to say:

"At worst, the burgeoning debt could trigger a future financial crisis. The danger is that 'we won't be able to sell [Treasury debt] at reasonable interest rates,' says economist Rudy Penner, head of the CBO from 1983 to 1987. In today's anxious climate, this hasn't happened. American and foreign investors have favored 'safe' U.S. Treasurys. But a glut of bonds, fears of inflation -- or something else -- might one day shatter confidence. Bond prices might fall sharply; interest rates would rise. The consequences could be worldwide because foreigners own half of U.S. Treasury debt.

The Obama budgets flirt with deferred distress, though we can't know what form it might take or when it might occur. Present gain comes with the risk of future pain. As the present economic crisis shows, imprudent policies ultimately backfire, even if the reversal's timing and nature are unpredictable.

The wonder is that these issues have been so ignored. Imagine hypothetically that a President McCain had submitted a budget plan identical to Obama's. There would almost certainly have been a loud outcry: 'McCain's Mortgaging Our Future.' Obama should be held to no less exacting a standard."

I have no idea what might have been said McCain. We - the whole country - have been lead down a garden path towards a service economy for most of my adult life. That leaves a lot to fix. We know now that we cannot base our entire national economy on financial services that amount to not much more than financial chicanery.

We now confront the effects of mollycoddling our remaining industrial companies from the brunt of complete international competition. We now know the true costs of not having a sane energy policy means that GM and Chrysler are heading towards bankruptcy and we have a quagmire called Iraq.

I am guessing that much of Obama's plans hinge on one idea - that we can increase our national incomes to match the costs of change. Think about his education plans.

All I can do is consider what Paul Krugman wrote yesterday in The Perfect, the Good, the Planet:

"Now, however, a somewhat uneasy coalition of progressives and centrists rules Washington, and staking out a position has become much trickier. Policy tends to move things in a desirable direction, yet to fall short of what you’d hoped to see. And the question becomes how many compromises, how much watering down, one is willing to accept."

I think Obama is making the necessary bet to fix our economic and financial problems. I onoly worry that it is too late.

E. J. Dionne - Obama Confronts Foes With Faith - washingtonpost.com

2009-05-18T06:34:00.001-05:00

I like how E. J. Dionne writes about Obama's Notre Dame visit in Obama Confronts Foes With Faith:

"For his part, Obama gave what may have been both the most radical and the most conservative speech of his presidency. Acknowledging the Roman Catholic Church's role in supporting his early community organizing work, the president drew on the resources of Catholic social thought. It combines opposition to abortion with a sharp critique of economic injustice and thus doesn't squeeze into the round holes of contemporary ideology.

'Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism,' Obama declared. 'The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice.'"

***

Although Jenkins made no reference to them, the scriptural readings at Catholic Masses yesterday drew on St. John's emphasis on the law of love. "This I command you: Love one another," Jesus declares in John's Gospel.

It was hard to square that message with the rage directed toward Obama and Jenkins by their detractors. Yet in raising the stakes entailed in Obama's visit, the critics did the president a great service.

By facing their arguments head-on and by demonstrating his attentiveness to Catholic concerns, Obama strengthened moderate and liberal forces inside the church itself. He also struck a forceful blow against those who would keep the nation mired in culture-war politics without end. Obama's opponents on the Catholic right placed a large bet on his Notre Dame visit. And they lost.

Meanwhile, The UK's Guardian has a link to the video.

More Photos From the Anderson Car Show

2009-05-17T17:45:00.004-05:00

Anderson Car Show Downtown

2009-05-16T17:45:00.005-05:00

We actually got a crowd downtown and lots of good looking cars - lots of Bel Airs for some reason. The pictures looking south were taken this morning when I dropped into the office. Those looking north were from this afternoon.

Ah, what a bit of sunshine will do for a day.

Not something seen every day - a 1960 Indy race car.

Regulating Hedge Funds - The View from Europe and Scotland

2009-05-08T09:24:00.000-05:00

I suspect that we will see more regulation of hedge funds on this side of the Atlantic. The Sunday Herald published EU puts Scotland’s small hedge fund sector in jeopardy giving us an idea of how the Eurpoeans wnat to regulate hedge funds

SINCE THE global financial meltdown began, financial services sectors across the world have become increasingly nervous about European and/or US politicians forcing through punitive and ill-considered regulation to appease public anger.

This anxiety eased with the appearance of carefully considered reports on the possible shape of future regulation, such as those by Lord Turner, chair of the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA), and an influential European report by the former head of the International Monetary Fund, Jacques de Larosiere. However, the sector's anxieties have been fully justified with the European Union's announcement on April 29 of a draft directive, cobbled together without consultation, aimed squarely at the European alternative fund management sector - often dubbed "the shadow banking system".

Seen as throwing subtlety to the winds, the EU has produced a piece of draft legislation that sweeps together hedge funds, private-equity funds, commodity funds, real estate funds and infrastructure funds. It proposes to regulate them all if the funds under management exceed 100 million.
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To put this in context, in hedge fund terms, a 50m fund is a start-up fund and most such funds would expect to exceed £100m in a year or two. This means that the EU has used rather a fine mesh for its regulatory net, and apparently intends to scoop up even the tiddlers - funds which by no stretch of the imagination could be classified as a "systemic threat" to the Eurozone. The legislation, if allowed to pass, will, as an incidental by-product, impose a heavy regulatory burden on Scotland's tiny hedge fund management sector.

***

David Aldrich, managing director of alternative investment services at The Bank of New York Mellon, (BNY Mellon) called the directive "a political attack on hedge funds, rather than a rational approach". A survey by BNY Mellon showed that while the global hedge fund sector is expected to shrink from just over $2 trillion in 2008 to $1trn by the second quarter of 2009, the sector will enjoy a resurgence - if it is not regulated to death - and by 2013 will have surpassed the high-water mark of 2008.

Commenting on Scotland's hedge fund sector, Aldrich said: "The reason why Scotland, which has no advantages such as the beneficial tax or corporate structures offered by offshore havens such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, enjoys a strong, if small, hedge fund sector has purely to do with the excellence of Scotland's fund managers - a few of whom have been attracted to the absolute return philosophy of hedge funds."

The sector in Scotland tends to focus on long/short equity strategies rather than on the more exotic strategies offered by London-based hedge funds. However, its performance through the crash has been outstanding.

I call it killing them with kindness

2009-05-06T07:07:00.000-05:00

Obama Handshake and the Politics of Civility

Those who are alarmed about President Obama's easy, casual camaraderie with Chavez misunderstand the role of civility in public life. Barack Obama is, if nothing else, a civil and gracious political leader. In all honesty, he is a little too civil for my taste. I am cut from the sarcastic, snarky, blogger cloth. I hold grudges and prefer to punish my political foes with biting commentary whenever possible. Barack Obama appoints his adversaries to cabinet positions and asks those he disagrees with to pray at his inauguration. It is a core element of who he is. Even in Obama's pre-presidential book, The Audacity of Hope, he displays his brand of polite restraint. He condemns racism, but doesn't name racists. He blames conservative policies for creating our national mess, but doesn't attack conservatives. You don't have to like it, but that handshake was authentic Obama.

See how Obama is doing it with the Republicans. I think his civility drives Limbaugh rabid and only increases the distaste independents feel towards the Republicans.

Who thought post-partisanship meant we had to be co-opted by the Republicans?

Rough Times Building Businesses

2009-05-05T10:37:00.000-05:00

Building Businesses in Turbulent Times — HBS Working Knowledge:

"In fact, cost cutting and restructuring are simply the first steps in repositioning and leading your company and industry through the crisis and in defining how business will be conducted in the future. In this interview, Applegate explains how large and small companies can position themselves to survive—and thrive—in turbulent times."

Ball State National Road Documentary

2009-05-05T10:08:00.000-05:00

Ball State documentary on the National Road debuts with free screenings

A Ball State University documentary about the Indiana segment of the National Road will be featured across the state with six free screenings. "Movers and Stakers: Stories along the Indiana National Road" will debut in Muncie at 7:30 p.m. May 7 at Pruis Hall. The documentary will also be shown in Greenfield, Indianapolis, Terre Haute and Richmond.

The documentary focuses on the Indiana segment of the nation's first federally funded highway, which was commissioned in 1806 by President Thomas Jefferson and runs from Cumberland, Md., to Vandalia, Ill.

***

"Movers and Stakers: Stories along the Indiana National Road" will not only air on public television, but will also be used in visitor centers, touch screen kiosks, museums and schools. To watch the trailer and learn more about the documentary, visit www.nationalroadfilm.com.

Did Anyone Really Believe Obama Would Cure All Problems?

2009-05-05T07:31:00.000-05:00

Not me. Whihc i s maybe why I find this and Rush Limbaugh's rants equally amusing.

A Lexicon of Disappointment

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.

***

Which brings me to the final entry in the lexicon.

Hoperoots. Sample sentence: "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots"

Obama's 100-Day Hope Check

Are Barack Obama's supporters wondering where the hope went? Does the campaign now seem only a golden dream? After all, Obama's been in the White House for over three months, and people are still losing jobs and houses, US troops are still overseas, single-payer health care is still not on the agenda. Surely the President should have fixed all that by now with the power of his mighty hope machine.

***

I have a lot of respect for Naomi Klein, but I think her own hopes for a mass radical movement are getting in the way here. According to polls, after all, Obama is wildly popular. A Harris Interactive poll released on April 7 found that 68% of Americans have a good opinion of him. That doesn't necessarily mean they approve of everything he's doing, but it means that a heck of a lot of people who didn't vote for him like him now. Is there any evidence that "a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard"? And by the way, did anyone over the age of 21 ever really believe this? That hope, an emotion, was going to "save the world," the way children clapping their hands saves Tinkerbell? Are Americans really such idiots? Hmmm, better not answer that.

***

I know a lot of people who supported Obama, and every time I see them I ask how they think he's doing. The only people I've found who've given up on him, who feel betrayed, misled, and foolish, are those leftists who didn't like him in the first place and voted for him in a weak moment as the lesser evil. They, predictably, went back to their cabins on Mt. Disdain before Obama had even been inaugurated. Obama will never satisfy the left because no president could. FDR didn't satisfy the left either.

I was a strong supporter of Obama but I always thought hopespeak fell somewhere between metaphor and twaddle. Obviously, Obama was not going to turn the US into Sweden. Obviously, he would make all sorts of compromises and deals. And obviously I would hate that. That's politics. Where am I on the hope-o-meter? Like everyone, I'm worried about the bailout, Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm appalled that he envisions no prosecution of those who set up the legal framework of torture and those who carried it out. And what about Bagram? On the plus side: he's been terrific on women's rights and reproductive rights here and abroad, made some excellent appointments (Hilda Solis at Labor), reached out to the Muslim world, opened communications with Cuba and Iran, said he'll close Guantanamo, declared an end to torture, and, with the stimulus, successfully challenged the notion that government spending (except on the military) is bad. He's made it less embarrassing to be an American. I think he'll make good judicial appointments. If another Katrina happened tomorrow, I think he'd handle it well.

It's important to challenge Obama. No president deserves mindless loyalty. But color me modestly hopeful -- for now.

Teaching Children to Manage Money

2009-05-04T07:40:00.000-05:00

From Secretary of State - Securities Division because it is a very good idea:

Teaching Children to Manage Money
by Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita

Consider this: the latest version of the classic board game Monopoly trades in cash for debit cards, but does it explain to children what overdraft charges are or how to maintain a register of transactions? What about the Barbie doll that comes equipped with her own credit card and cash register? When she swipes too many times, her balance resets without requiring any payment. What message does that send children about the reality of using debit and credit cards?

Establishing good money management habits and a solid understanding of financial concepts is important for Hoosiers of all ages. But it’s especially important for younger generations to understand how to manage money even at a young age, giving them a solid foundation for when they enter the “real world” later. Today’s youth are tomorrow’s spenders, savers and investors. It’s critical that we stay invested in their future and make financial literacy a focus of their education.

April is national Financial Literacy Month, highlighting the importance of establishing and maintaining healthy financial habits. Simply put, financial literacy is a basic understanding of personal finance. It includes concepts like budgeting, saving, investing, insurance, understanding how credit and debit cards work, retirement planning and much more.

The Chrysler Bankruptcy

2009-05-04T07:19:00.001-05:00

First off, the bankruptcy petition courtesy of The New York Times is here. Things gets interesting about page 32.

From The Kokomo Tribune comes Fiat impressed with Kokomo facilities:

Representatives from Italian automaker Fiat SpA toured the four Kokomo Chrysler plants and were reportedly impressed with the facilities.

Fiat announced Thursday it would form a partnership with Chrysler LLC that is expected to return the American automaker to profitability.

Fiat has agreed to share its engine and powertrain technology with Chrysler and intends to produce an economical model in the U.S.

Shawn Fain, a representative with United Auto Workers Local 1166, said the tour took place about a month ago.

“They were impressed with the facilities,” Fain said of the Kokomo Transmission Plant, Kokomo Casting Plant and Indiana Transmission Plants I and II. “They wanted to see the facilities to determine if we had the capacity to do the work.”

Which fits with some scuttlebutt I heard last week and some of this gets touched on in the bankruptcy petition.

The New York Times covers the filing with Chrysler Begins Voyage Down Bankruptcy Route:

As part of its reorganization, Chrysler said Friday that it planned to shut eight plants permanently, lay off about 6,500 workers and close an unspecified number of dealerships.
Judge Gonzalez granted Chrysler’s request to use its existing cash management system, which would enable the company to transfer money to other subsidiaries to keep operating.
Lawyers for various constituencies, including banks, car dealerships, hedge funds, parts makers and others have been working around the clock readying their arguments to make sure their interests are protected in court.
Thomas E. Lauria of the law firm White & Case, who represents a committee of the secured creditors, declined to comment to reporters and did not raise any objections to the motions at the hearing. It is still unclear whether the group, which includes Oaktree Capital Management, OppenheimerFunds, Stairway Capital Management, Schultze Asset Management, Group G Capital Partners and the TCW Group, will object to Chrysler’s restructuring plan at the continuation of the case next week.
The lenders, who say they believe they are being treated unfairly in the process, may request that Chrysler be liquidated. But, according to the company’s own analysis, a liquidation would cost more than $2 billion and there are unlikely to be many buyers for Chrysler’s assets.

***

Judge Gonzalez has experience with major bankruptcy cases, having overseen the reorganization of Enron in 2001, which set a record by filing for bankruptcy with $63 billion in assets, and WorldCom in 2002, which topped Enron with $107 billion assets when it filed.
Court documents filed by Chrysler in New York on Thursday showed that Chrysler’s re-emergence from bankruptcy could take until Aug. 28, or four months from now.
Bankruptcy always contains some element of unpredictability, and the debtholders who oppose the new arrangement could argue in court that the company is worth more to them in liquidation.

And also Chrysler Files to Seek Bankruptcy Protection:

But administration officials said they believed that it was highly unlikely that a bankruptcy court judge would side with the minority when those holding 70 percent of the debt had signed off on the arrangement.
Chrysler said its factories would go mostly idle starting Monday, and remain so for the bulk of the process. Auto workers will receive about 80 percent of their base pay during the shutdown. The Treasury is providing $3.3 billion in so-called debtor-in-possession financing, and administration officials said during a conference call with reporters that no jobs would be lost during the bankruptcy.
Any future cuts, they said, would be decided by the new company’s board — which is to include representatives appointed by the union, the administration and the government of Canada, which also lent money — and the successor to the Chrysler chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli, who said he would leave the company at the bankruptcy’s end.

Some older stuff now.

Local unions confident in Obama’s plan (Kokomo Tribune):

UAW Local 1166 representative Shawn Fain didn’t want a bankruptcy to occur at the company at all, nevertheless, he thinks it’s better it happened now.

“[Obama] cares about the families and the thousands of people this affects,” said Fain, who was also a member of the UAW Chrysler National Negotiating Committee. “If this was eight years ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. We would have been liquidated.

“We hoped to avoid bankruptcy, but it’s here. We are not out of work and we have our jobs. Now, we need to get this [bankruptcy] done as fast as we can so we can get back to work.”

Obama Vows Swift Overhaul As Chrysler Enters Bankruptcy - washingtonpost.com:

"But some bankruptcy specialists warned that the court process can be unpredictable and difficult to manage in the case of a company as vast as Chrysler. Fearing the worst, for example, the National Automobile Dealers Association, which represents Chrysler dealers, has hired law firm Arnold & Porter to protect dealer investments.

The administration's assertion that the bankruptcy could wrap up within 60 days 'is something I would expect someone who has never been involved in a bankruptcy would say,' said Jean Robertson, chair of business restructuring at Calfee, Halter & Griswold. 'There is nothing typical about this case. It's like Frankenstein, and Frankenstein isn't pretty.'"

Bankrupt Chrysler owes Cummins $43.9M:
"Chrysler LLC owes Cummins Inc. $43.9 million, the ailing automaker disclosed in its bankruptcy filing yesterday, making the southern Indiana company one of its top unsecured creditors.

A Cummins spokesman said some of that money will be covered by the U.S. Treasury Department's new Supplier Support Program, which the company entered last month.

'It's our belief a large percentage of that is going to be covered,' spokesman Mark Land said. 'That program is working. Some of it's already coming our way.'

Chrysler's bankruptcy raises big questions for Cummins, which less than two years ago counted the manufacturer's Dodge Ram pickup as its single-largest customer.

Cummins is the exclusive provider of diesel engines for the heavy-duty Dodge Ram, and it has been working on a new light-duty line."

Meanwhile, Fiat appears to be building an empire out of some other US properties: Amber warning light as Fiat woos German ministers in attempt to take control of Opel.

For small businesses

2009-05-04T06:56:00.000-05:00

Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy - Peter Bregman - HarvardBusiness.org

In the worst economy we've seen in decades, Passlogix, a privately owned 100-person software development company, just received over a million dollars in prepaid commitments for the next three to five years of service. And they beat out several much larger more established companies, like CA (14,000 employees) and IBM (400,000 employees), to win those customers.

Now, how do you explain that? The bigger companies aren't getting similar deals. It's not standard in this industry to prepay contracts of that size and duration. And the clients received only a small reduction for their upfront payment, less than the cost of capital.

I think it's a trend. And understanding it might just be the difference between failing and thriving in this economy.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast with a good friend of mine, a mentor in the consulting industry. He's a senior partner in a large consulting company and has worked in one large company or another for the past 35 years. Really smart, really talented.

***

Now compare that to Passlogix, whose clients know they can pick up the phone and speak with Marc Boroditsky, the CEO. He tells clients about his commitment to the company and to them, and they know exactly who to call if the work isn't done to their expectations. That personal relationship, that trust, is important to them. They're willing to invest in it long term — to the tune of millions of dollars, up front.

And it's not just the CEO. If clients speak with other employees in the company, they'll get the same feeling of trust. A small company gives its employees a sense of security and employees pass that feeling on to clients. Not that small companies don't go out of business. They do all the time. But each employee has much greater control over his own destiny. In a company of 30 employees, if you do a great job, there is a good chance you'll be recognized. But in a company of thousands? It's easy to be missed. And easy to be laid off.

The gap of confidence between small companies and big ones is growing. We used to rely on the security of big companies. That's why we worked for them. And hired them. And put our money in them.

12 Ways Companies are Reacting to the Recession | Shrinkage Is Good

Recessions mean big changes for everyone and everything, including the marketing campaigns businesses use to reach customers. During economic downturns, the “same old, same old” advertising that carry businesses through prosperous times simply will not cut it. Our current recession is no exception, as businesses take to the Internet, radio, television, and billboards with marketing tactics that target the needs and concerns of consumers under duress rather than the products themselves. Here are twelve examples of such recession marketing strategies, as well as the companies known to employ them.

Lauth Goes Into Bankruptcy

2009-05-03T17:33:00.000-05:00

Okay, we all have been concentrating on Chrysler, and while not as big, Lauth unit seeks bankruptcy protection has osmethng to say about our Indiana economy:

"Real estate developer Lauth Investment Properties LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection this morning after months of weathering brutal market conditions here and across the country.

The filing in Indianapolis bankruptcy court listed assets and liabilities of up to $10 million.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Lauth Investment Properties represents only part of the Lauth Group Inc. development empire.

IBJ reported last month that Lauth Group had cut about 90 percent of its staff and lost control of part of its portfolio to an equity partner."

What's Up For the General Assembly's Special Session

2009-05-03T13:37:00.000-05:00

Some questions from The Indianapolis Business Journal's NewsTalk blog's
Fodder for special session

Should anything else be put on the table for a special session? Here’s a partial list of what didn’t happen:

–fixing the Capital Improvement Board mess
–streamlining local government
–funding mass transit
–banning smoking statewide in public places and businesses
–expanding charter schools
–forcing utilities to supply part of their electricity from renewable resources.

Meanwhile, Doug Masson critiques what lead to the special session in his More on Special Session and his I didn’t see that coming.

I agree with what Capitol Watch blog wrote this in its Taxpayers lose, but could someone win in special session? :

I wrote a few days ago that Gov. Mitch Daniels was probably rooting for a special session, seeing as how it is a proper distraction from his inability to push large portions of his legislative agenda through either half of the General Assembly this session. Bosma and his ilk clearly see lucrative political hay in a protracted battle, although their refusal to vote for anything over the last few weeks begs the question as to what exactly they do support other than their own re-election campaigns.

Swine Flu: Good Argument Against CAFO's?

2009-05-03T13:12:00.002-05:00

Reading The Sunday Herald from Scotland and got to thinking that here is an argument against CAFO's that I had not seen put quite this way.

Pig flu: warnings the world ignored:

A team led by Dr Gregory Gray at the University of Iowa College of Public Health has long been investigating the risks of viruses jumping from animals to people. In November 2005, they published a major study in the scientific journal, Clinical Infection Diseases.

It pointed out that an enormous shift had taken place in pig farming in the US over the last 60 years. In 1965 there were more than a million farmers with an average of 50 pigs each, but now there are only 50,000 farmers with an average of 900 pigs each.

In Iowa there are nearly nine times more pigs than people, with 25 million hogs a year raised at 9,300 farms.

"The potential for animal-to-animal transmission will be much greater than on a traditional farm because of the pigs' crowding resulting in prolonged and more frequent contact," it argued.

"In addition, virus-laden secretions from pigs may be more concentrated, and reductions in ventilation and sunshine exposure may prolong viral viability."

The study warned swine workers could "initiate epidemics" by mixing viral strains which would then trigger a pandemic. "They may serve as a conduit for a novel virus to move from swine to man or from man to swine," the study said.

"One might envision that, once a novel virus is introduced into a densely populated swine barn, the viral loads swine workers would experience could overwhelm any partial immunity they might possess. After work, they may readily communicate that virus to their family members and neighbours."

Gray and his colleagues uncovered evidence that swine flu was widespread in farmers, meat processing workers and vets. They also pointed out that the infection now occurred all the year round in pig farms, instead of just seasonally as in the past.

Intensive farming breeds more than cheap food:

Swine flu has disturbing echoes of bird flu H5N1. Its epicentre was the intensive poultry farms of Asia. One theory is that H5N1 originated at Qinghai Lake in northern China which is surrounding by intensive poultry farms whose "poultry manure", a euphemism for what is scraped off the floor - bird faeces, feathers and soiled litter - was used as feed and fertiliser in fish farms and fields around the lake. Worldwide, intensive poultry production, like pig meat production, has exploded and this growth has been mirrored by an increase in avian flu. In southeast Asian countries, where most of the H5N1 outbreaks are concentrated - Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam - production has jumped eight-fold in just three decades as cheap chicken meat has become an international commodity. Thai chicken, for instance, is a common ingredient in many UK ready-meals. They don't yet contain Mexican pork, but if our taste for cheap foreign meat persists, anything is possible.

As if you do not know

2009-05-03T07:19:00.001-05:00

Congress Approves Obama's $3.4 Trillion Spending Blueprint - washingtonpost.com

Despite a persistent recession and soaring budget deficits, Democrats overwhelmingly endorsed the president's request for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending over the next decade for college loans, early childhood education programs, veterans' benefits and investments in renewable energy aimed at reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil.

Lawmakers also agreed to use a powerful procedural tool known as reconciliation to advance the president's proposal to expand health coverage for the uninsured -- a move that ensures Republicans would not be able to filibuster the legislation. Unlike in 1993, when then-President Bill Clinton unveiled a universal coverage plan that went nowhere on Capitol Hill, Obama has a strong mandate for change from both chambers of Congress and a mid-October deadline for key congressional committees to send legislation to the full House and Senate.

Congress Approves Obama's $3.4 Trillion Spending Blueprint - washingtonpost.com

The budget resolution didn't win a single vote from Republican lawmakers, who were enraged that the deficit is projected to exceed $1.2 trillion next year. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called it an "audacious move to a big socialist government" that piles "debt on the backs of our kids and our grandkids."

Still, the measure passed the House by a vote of 233 to 193 and the Senate 53 to 43. Only 17 Democrats in the House and three in the Senate voted against it, as did Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who announced Tuesday that he would leave the Republican Party.

Approval of the budget blueprint marked a huge victory for Obama on his 100th day in office, but it was not a slam-dunk for him. Lawmakers trimmed his tax-cutting plans, refusing to extend his signature tax credit for working families past 2010 unless it is paid for. They sliced $10 billion from his spending request for non-defense programs in the fiscal year that begins in October and jettisoned his suggestion that another $250 billion would be needed to stabilize the banking system. They also refused to authorize the use of reconciliation for his plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

George F. Will - Washington Unreconciled on 'Reconciliation' and Torture - washingtonpost.com

The reconciliation process was created in 1974 to facilitate adjustments of existing spending programs. Former senator John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says using reconciliation to ram through health-care reform would "circumvent the normal and customary workings of American democracy." But those workings have changed markedly.

The most important alteration of the legislative process in recent decades has been the increasingly promiscuous use of filibusters to impose a de facto supermajority requirement for important legislation. And "important" has become a very elastic term.

It should be difficult for government to act precipitously. "Great innovations," said Jefferson, "should not be forced on slender majorities." Revamping health care -- 17 percent of the economy -- qualifies as a great innovation. This is especially so because the administration and its allies, without being candid about what is afoot, are trying to put the nation on a glide path to a "single-payer" -- entirely government-run -- system. They would do this by creating a government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. It would be able to -- indeed, would be intended to -- push private insurers out of business.

But when Republicans ran the Senate, they, too, occasionally made dubious use of reconciliation. And Republicans' merely situational commitment to legislative due process was displayed in 2003 when they held open a House vote for three hours until they could pressure enough reluctant Republicans to pass the prescription drug entitlement.

Obama Education Plans

2009-05-02T07:06:00.000-05:00

Honestly, first I had seen of this. Obama himself may be the best advertisement for the power of a good education but it will take some time. I still see too many people around here whose kids or themselves are dropping out of high school.

Proposals Would Transform College Aid - washingtonpost.com

If adopted, they could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial.

At stake is a plan to expand the Pell Grant program, making it an entitlement akin to Medicare and Social Security. Key to the effort is a consolidation of student lending that would give the U.S. Department of Education a near monopoly over the practice -- a proposal that has mobilized the private loan industry, which lent $55.3 billion to 6.4 million students in the 2007-2008 school year.

Obama outlined his initiatives, which also include incentives for colleges to cut costs and to raise graduation rates, in the fiscal 2010 budget that Congress approved Wednesday, and Democratic leaders said they hope to make them law by October.

Now That Specter is a Republican...

2009-04-30T10:51:00.002-05:00

This article of his from The New York Review of Books seems even a bit more pertinent, The Need to Roll Back Presidential Power Grabs.

These experiences have crystallized for me the need for Congress and the courts to reassert themselves in our system of checks and balances.^[16] The bills I have outlined are important steps in that process. Equally important is vigorous congressional oversight of the executive branch. This oversight must extend well beyond the problems of national security, especially as we cede more and more authority over our economy to government officials.

As for curbing executive branch excesses from within, I hope President Obama lives up to his campaign promise of change. His recent signing statements have not been encouraging. Adding to the feeling of déjà vu is TheWashington Post 's report that the new administration has reasserted the "state secrets" privilege to block lawsuits challenging controversial policies like warrantless wiretapping: "Obama has not only maintained the Bush administration approach, but [in one such case] the dispute has intensified." Government lawyers are now asserting that the US Circuit Court in San Francisco, which is hearing the case, lacks authority to compel disclosure of secret documents, and are "warning" that the government might "spirit away" the material before the court can release it to the litigants.^[17] I doubt that the Democratic majority, which was so eager to decry expansions of executive authority under President Bush, will still be as interested in the problem with a Democratic president in office. I will continue the fight whatever happens.

—April 16, 2009

Obama in three sentences

2009-04-30T07:28:00.001-05:00

Tom Shales - Tom Shales: Obama Deftly Handles Another Prime-Time News Conference - washingtonpost.com

Barack Obama is a truly flabbergasting president. And in a good way -- not the way some of his predecessors were. He's not flabberghastly.

Andersonian Doing Good

2009-04-30T07:25:00.001-05:00

A tip of my hat to CatherinePoole.com, Highland High School graduate and a friend.

Senate Dems Post New Video

2009-04-28T09:03:00.002-05:00

Give it a look here. Give our Democratic Senators a lot of points for sheer pluck. Never have we had the majority in the Senate in my lifetime but our people come up with some really good ideas.

GM: The You Know What Looks At The Fan

2009-04-28T08:01:00.001-05:00

Pressure on GM grows as bankers attack survival plan - Times Online

A statement issued by GM bondholders said: “We believe the offer to be a blatant disregard of fairness for the bondholders who have funded this company and amounts to using taxpayer money to show political favouritism of one creditor over another.” The advisers are preparing to issue a counter offer within the next ten days.

GM, in its revised survival plans, made no mention of Vauxhall, its British operation, which employs 5,000 people, nor of the German business operating under the Opel brand with a workforce of 25,000.

Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, the union, said that a fire-sale by GM of Opel and Vauxhall to Fiat might follow as part of GM’s restructuring. Mr Woodley said that the British, German and Spanish governments should fight such a move because GM Europe needed far more investment than Fiat could muster.

Fritz Henderson, chief executive of GM, admitted that the chance of bondholders agreeing to the debt-for-equity swap by the May 25 deadline was slight. He said: “It’s not impossible, but the bankruptcy is now more probable.”

Thin the headline says it all - very close to the feces hitting the fan. is this a game of chicken or a drag race down a blind alley?

Too hot, too much work

2009-04-27T20:15:00.002-05:00

And while, I hope there is more to come, this song really hit home tonight. Got to break down and have some Doors sometime.

Lemon Drop and Gene's Root Get Mentioned in The New York Times

2009-04-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

An Indiana Town Appreciates Obama, and That Stimulus Cash, Too:

"Thanks to the stimulus plan, a part-time dentist and three other health workers will soon arrive at the health center that sits along Ohio Avenue in the shadows of closed plants. The building, where patients squeeze into in a few examination rooms, will expand to house nearly triple the work force of 35 if a federal grant of $450,000 arrives.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m saying, Thank God,” said Mr. Malone, president of the Madison County Community Health Center, which like other offices here is troubled by budget shortfalls. “Yes, stimulus money makes a difference. It’s created a new sense of hope in this community.”"

***

A drive through Anderson brings to life some of the complex challenges that Mr. Obama inherited, notably the final shift to a service-based economy. A casino with a flashing neon advertisement, “Easy Come, Easy Dough,” sits near a Starbucks and a string of other chain stores, while less than a mile away is a desolate patch once so busy with General Motors workers that plants staggered schedules to keep traffic moving.
These problems are far bigger than one president, particularly because Anderson has been in economic decline since Mr. Obama was a teenager. Its history can be glimpsed in symbols of the past that remain open, like the Lemon Drop Drive In and Gene’s Root Beer.

Book Review - London Times - Bankers Leading Us Into The Great Depression

2009-04-27T07:06:00.001-05:00

Lords of Finance: 1929, the Great Depression and the Bankers who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed review

Norman became a broken man when sterling was forced off the gold standard by a run on the pound and — perhaps more inexplicable to Norman — after a new American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chose to devalue the dollar when he didn’t have to. In 1948, a couple of years before he died, Norman wrote: “As I look back, it now seems that, with all the thought and work and good intentions, which we provided, we achieved absolutely nothing… Nothing that I did, and very little that old Ben [Strong] did, internationally produced any good effect — or indeed any effect at all except that we collected money from a lot of poor devils and gave it over to the four winds.”

It would be tempting to dismiss the interwar years as a period of collective insanity, when there were no voices of common sense and reason among the world’s political, economic and intellectual leaders. But that would not be right. The great British economist, John Maynard Keynes, routinely saw the elephant in the room and was ignored until it was too late. Keynes was eventually invited to be a member of the Court of the Bank of England, where he regularly lunched with Norman. “I do enjoy these lunches at the Bank,” said Keynes. “Montagu Norman always absolutely charming, always absolutely wrong.”

Ball State Business startup film to debut

2009-04-27T06:24:00.001-05:00

Business Line | thestarpress.com | The Star Press

A group of Ball State University business and telecommunications student fellows will debut their documentary film entitled Increasing the Odds: Starting a Business. The presentation on April 30 will begin with hors d'oeuvres at 6 p.m. after which the film will premiere at 6:45 p.m. in the Interurban Hall of the Horizon Convention Center.

***

The film features a number of start-up businesses in various stages of development to illustrate the process. Insight from top executives at Vera Bradley, Anheuser-Busch and Ball Corporation represent the large, well-known and developed companies. Muncie's Blue Bottle Coffee Shop and Air Robotics LLC are included in the film to feature younger and smaller start-up companies.
Admission to the film is free and open to the public.
Information: www.bsu.edu/vbc or call the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry at 287-0117.

Discussion How Indiana Will Spend Stimulus Money

2009-04-27T06:14:00.001-05:00

Stimulus impact to be discussed Friday | thestarpress.com | The Star Press

There has been plenty of speculation over what impact the Federal stimulus package will have on Indiana communities. On Friday -- more than 100 days into the Obama administration and two months after the beginning of funds distribution -- E. Mitchell Roob Jr. will discuss the outlook for how dollars will be utilized throughout Indiana, with particular attention paid to the implications for health care information technology. Roob is the Indiana Secretary of Commerce and chief executive officer of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

Roob will speak in a video conference of the latest TechPoint New Economy New Rules briefing. The conference can be viewed at the Ball State University Alumni Center, with registration to begin at 8 a.m.

There is no charge to attend, but register by contacting Susan Orebaugh at 751-9116 or sorebaugh@muncie.com.

Obama 's First 100 Days: UK Telegraph Travels to Indiana

2009-04-27T06:08:00.001-05:00

The writer sees what is wrong with Obama's economic policy here. Not having bought the hype, I am willing ot give Obama time. I keep thinking the 100 day thing is an intellectual crutch borrowed from the days of FDR. The mess today is a whole lot worse than in 1932. Reasoning by analogy can never go far with success

Barack Obama's audacity of hype crumbles

"Gary, Indiana is like an eagle poised to fly," mayor Rudy Clay tells me, "All we need is the air of the fiscal stimulus beneath our wings and we'll soar once again and make America proud."

***

The mayor has applied for $400 million out of Barack Obama's $787 billion fiscal stimulus plan. Top of his wish list are automatic weapons and Kevlar vests for the police, and some more police to tote them: last year, in this, the crime capital of the Midwest, he had to lay off police officers due to shortage of funds.

The city symbolises the scale of the economic challenge facing Obama as he approaches 100 days in office. If the president is to deliver something more than the "audacity of hype", homes will have to be built in Gary, health care delivered, and a way found for its inhabitants to live on something more than benefits and debt. But much of America is in revolt against what needs to happen for this to be achieved. And Obama's own momentum on the economic front looks weak.

***

If there is a pattern emerging here it is not incompetence but, say Obama's critics, "capture". Both Bernanke and Geithner stood at the heart of the Bush policy elite during the days of dither and denial that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Obama, lacking credible economic heavyweights in his own circle, was obliged to reach into the ranks of Clinton-era Democrats. The irony of Larry Summers' appointment as chief economic adviser was not lost on historians of the credit crunch: Summers had hailed the 1999 law that deregulated Wall Street as "a major step toward the 21st century".

Obama is surrounded by decision-makers who had "drunk the Kool Aid" during the subprime bubble and were profoundly committed to the neoliberal ideology of self-regulation that has now fallen apart. Only the fiscal stimulus truly bears Obama's chosen brand values of audacity and untaintedness. But this, too, is proving heavily problematic.

In January, two Left-leaning members of Obama's transition team laid out radical objectives for the stimulus plan. It would "create or save" between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010 and boost GDP by 3.7 per cent. It would be delivered not primarily through tax cuts but by public spending. And, though construction and energy would account for a quarter of the job creation, more than a million extra health, education and social care jobs would be created, together with 800,000 public sector jobs saved at state level.

***

As Obama's 100th day approaches, the dangers looming on the economic front are clear: neither on monetary, fiscal nor banking policy is there a tangibly successful programme in place. Meanwhile, the economic pain is getting worse, encouraging his opponents to chip away at his credibility.

Not much of a surprise: Pontiac to Die

2009-04-27T00:02:00.001-05:00

GM to announce death of Pontiac, other restructuring | thestarpress.com | The Star Press

Both people confirmed that the plan includes the death of Pontiac, famous for the Trans Am sports car and the GTO. Efforts in the last few years to market Pontiac as performance-oriented brand failed to work. The company had said it wanted to keep Pontiac as a niche brand with one or two models, but is buckling under tremendous government pressure to consolidate its eight brands, several of which lose money.

The people said GM won’t have much new information on Hummer, Saturn or other brands, including Europe’s Opel. GM has indicated it wants to focus on four core brands, Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.

Fossil Fuel Companies Hide Research Supporting Kyoto

2009-04-26T21:48:00.001-05:00

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.

Union Deal with Chrysler

2009-04-26T21:46:00.001-05:00

Chrysler and Union Agree to Deal Before Federal Deadline - NYTimes.com

DETROIT — Union leaders said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with Chrysler that meets the federal government’s requirements for the automaker to receive more financing.

The deal also includes Fiat, the Italian automaker with which Chrysler was ordered by the government to form an alliance before Thursday.

Neither the United Automobile Workers union nor the company released details of the agreement, which modifies the union’s 2007 contract and reduces the amount of money Chrysler must pay into a new health care fund for retirees.

Fiat and Chrysler

2009-04-26T21:23:00.001-05:00

Kokomo Tribune; Kokomo, Indiana - Chrysler lenders make counteroffer

DETROIT -- Chrysler’s lenders have delivered another counterproposal to President Barack Obama’s auto task force, as the gap narrows on what the company can pay and what creditors will accept to reduce $6.9 billion in loans, according to a source familiar with the process.

Kokomo Tribune; Kokomo, Indiana - Chrysler talks intensify

In New York, a group representing Chrysler's secured lenders on Thursday was preparing to send to Treasury its latest terms to wipe out much of the $6.9 billion in company debt they carry. The two sides remain far apart in these crucial talks.

The Canadian Auto Workers said Thursday night they were close to a deal on labor concessions with Chrysler, but with the number of details still to be worked out, talks were expected to continue today.

In Italy, Fiat SpA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said he was still committed to concluding an alliance with Chrysler, but reiterated that the Italian automaker would not inject cash to close the deal.

In Washington, the Obama administration's auto task force continued intensive negotiations with the United Auto Workers on an agreement to protect the bulk of workers' health care and pension benefits in the event of bankruptcy.

Would Detroit Sound Any Better in Italian? - NYTimes.com

At an extraordinary moment when the global financial crisis has put governments, rather than auto executives, in the driver’s seat, Mr. Marchionne may have found a way to build an empire with — almost — no money down.

Err, Maybe Because We Need to Kno wWhat is going On?

2009-04-26T20:54:00.001-05:00

AN OBAMA OVERLOAD - New York Post

In his first 100 days in office, former President George W. Bush preempted primetime only once, for his State of the Union Address.

Obama is asking for the 8 p.m. slot on Wednesday to discuss his first 100 days in office. This is inconvenient for the networks because it falls during the May sweeps period.

CBS and ABC have lined up new episodes of their comedies, while Fox planned to air a new episode of "Lie to Me." NBC is running a repeat of "Law & Order." (News Corp. owns Fox and The Post.)

The networks got Obama's request on Thursday. Both Fox and NBC said no decision had been made as of yesterday evening. Both networks also have the option of shifting it to their respective cable-news outlets, Fox News and MSNBC.

Considering how well the mainstream press did not cover the Bush White House, considering the crisis to date. perhaps the networks should bite their tongues. As for those complaining aobut too much Obama - it helps to see that guy in the Oval Office is working and not complaining about how hard a job he has.

Great Depression Revisionism of a Different Sort?

2009-04-26T20:35:00.001-05:00

Strategies - The Road Back From the ’29 Crash Wasn’t So Long, After All - NYTimes.com

But a careful analysis of the record shows that the picture is more complex and, ultimately, far less daunting: An investor who invested a lump sum in the average stock at the market’s 1929 high would have been back to a break-even by late 1936 — less than four and a half years after the mid-1932 market low.

How can this be? Three factors have obscured this truth from investors: deflation, dividends and the distinction between the Dow Jones industrial average and the overall stock market.

Obama Tax "Increase" Not So Bad

2009-04-26T20:07:00.001-05:00

Economic View - Before the Tea Party, Thank Your Lucky Stars - NYTimes.com

Other protesters contended that the tax system already strains the vital connection between individual effort and reward and warned that further tax increases might destroy it.

But these accusations don’t withstand scrutiny. The current system is much fairer than many people believe, and the president’s proposal will make it both fairer and more efficient.

Contrary to what many parents tell their children, talent and hard work are neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success. It helps to be talented and hard-working, of course, yet some people enjoy spectacular success despite having neither attribute. (Lip-synching members of boy bands? Money managers who bet clients’ retirement savings on subprime-mortgage-backed securities?)

Far more numerous are talented people who work very hard, only to achieve modest earnings. There are hundreds of them for every skilled, perseverant person who strikes it rich — disparities that often stem from random events.

***

The president’s proposal is modest: raising the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 39.5 percent, its level when Bill Clinton left office and well below the corresponding level in most other industrial countries. There has never been a shortage of talented people willing to work hard for success — even in countries with top rates much higher than 50 percent. And the president’s proposal would not cause such a shortage in 2010.

It would, however, promote more efficient provision of public services, in much the same way that contingent fee contracts often promote more efficient provision of services in the private sector. For example, when lawyers are willing to waive fees unless their client wins, wrongfully injured accident victims often gain legal representation they couldn’t otherwise afford. Similarly, when government levies higher tax rates on the wealthy, we can provide public services that the wealthy and others greatly value but that would otherwise be beyond reach. Under such a tax system, the heavier tax bill becomes payable only if we’re lucky enough to end up among life’s biggest winners.

Purdue's Brains Ferments Business

2009-04-23T08:03:00.000-05:00

Purdue startup marketing ethanol yeast

An Indiana biotechnology company announced yesterday that it has begun producing a genetically modified yeast that promises to make it easier and faster to turn corn cobs, wood chips and a host of agricultural wastes into ethanol.

Green Tech America Inc. of West Lafayette said its modified yeast ferments both major forms of sugar - glucose and xylose - involved in creating cellulosic ethanol from plant matter.

Adn what keeps Indiana from more businesses like this?

Where Are the Democrats Going With Healthcare?

2009-04-23T07:38:00.000-05:00

Health-Care Dialogue Alarms Obama's Allies:

"Disputes over whether to create a new government-sponsored insurance program to compete with private companies shine a light on the intraparty fissures that may prove more problematic than any partisan brawl.

More than 70 House Democrats recently warned party leaders that they will not support a broad health reform bill that does not offer consumers a government-sponsored policy, and two unions withdrew from a high-profile health coalition because it would not endorse a public plan.
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'It's way too early' to abandon what it considers a central plank in health reform, said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. He said the organization pulled out of the bipartisan Health Reform Dialogue because it feared its friends in the coalition were sacrificing core principles too soon. 'You don't make compromises with your allies.'"

***

Douglass disputed suggestions of a rift in the party. "The Democrats are extraordinarily unified this time around," she said.

Yet even administration allies acknowledged tensions over the public plan option.

"This issue has become so vituperative, a serious conversation about how to structure a public plan has gotten secondary attention," Pollack said.

Nichols, who has proposed creating a semi-public option that would have publicly appointed managers but no rate-setting authority, said the disagreement signals a new phase in the overall debate. As he put it: "We've gotten past the kumbaya phase."

Money for high-speed rail

2009-04-23T07:29:00.000-05:00

States seek stimulus money for high-speed rail:

"Governors from Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin have sent a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking for his support.

A first phase would upgrade passenger-train routes from Chicago to St. Louis, from Chicago to Madison, Wis., and from Chicago to Pontiac, Mich., via Detroit.

Officials say the cost of the initial phase would be around $3.5 billion and that it could be done by 2014.

A later phase would develop the St. Louis-to-Kansas City route."

Lafayette Doing Well - Lessons for Anderson?

2009-04-23T07:23:00.000-05:00

From Masson’s Blog, Lafayette, Indiana: Rising Star :

"(H/t Thomas for this link). There is a report on newgeography.com that lists Lafayette as #1 in the nation for its improvement in the “Best Cities for Jobs” rankings."

Take a look and I think there are things we can do here. Plus we have a closer relationship with Indianapolis. Do we have the will and the imagination?

What Blackford County Schools Doing About Cost Savings

2009-04-22T23:09:00.000-05:00

Blackford board votes to keep schools open; cut teacher jobs | thestarpress.com | The Star Press

It was a decision that followed the recommendation of Supt. Ken Kline, who called it the “least invasive” of seven options considered by the board in the last month as a cost-saving move. It will save the school corporation $239,257.

Four of the teachers will be cut from the current Montpelier School roster, while one other position will be eliminated at Northside and Southside elementaries in Hartford City.

Compare what Anderson did.

Anderson Fixing Up Grandview Restaurant?

2009-04-22T22:56:00.000-05:00

The Herald Bulletin - Grandview restaurant proposals considered

Roger and Cheryl Moran, who own Moran’s Bar & Grill at 23rd and Pitt streets, and Cilantros Inc. turned in proposals before Tuesday’s park board meeting. The committee will look at which proposal would be more beneficial for the restaurant.

Representatives from Cilantros were not at the meeting, but the Morans said their proposal would include the owners themselves being at the facility at all times.

***

Although supporters of only one of the proposals were at the meeting, park board President Darin Foltz emphasized the board had not made up its mind on who would operate the restaurant.

The board will look at both proposals and weigh the fact that the Parks Department does not have funding to contribute to the project.

“We have basically no capital to contribute to this,” Foltz said.

BSU's Gora gets award for tech innovation

2009-04-22T13:19:00.000-05:00

BSU's Gora to be honored for tech innovation:

"Ball State University President Jo Ann Gora has been chosen to receive TechPoint's annual Trailblazer Award for 'significant and lasting contributions to technology innovation in Indiana,' the statewide business-development group announced today.

Gora will be recognized at the group's annual Mira Awards, which honor the state's top-performing companies, schools and individuals in technology-related pursuits. The Mira Gala takes place May 16 at the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis."

***

Under Gora, Ball State's president since 2004, the Muncie university has been named the nation's top wireless campus in surveys conducted by Intel Corp. and the Center for Digital Education.

"Dr. Gora is a pioneer who is putting Indiana on the map in the world of emerging media," said Jim Jay, president and CEO of TechPoint.

The Great Depression and Now

2009-04-22T09:22:00.000-05:00

Remember reasoning by analogies always have a limited run - no two things are ever identical. Here is a good reminder of that fact. Learn what you can and then figure out what are the differences.

Robert J. Samuelson - The Financial Crisis and the Great Depression - washingtonpost.com

The Depression was exceptional in its economic ferocity. As Liaquat Ahamed writes in his book "Lords of Finance": "During a three-year period, real GDP [gross domestic product] in the major economies fell by over 25 percent, a quarter of the adult male population was thrown out of work. . . . The economic turmoil created hardships in every corner of the globe, from the prairies of Canada to the teeming cities of Asia."

Anyone who wants to know why should read this engrossing book. Ahamed, a professional money manager, attributes the Depression to two central causes: the misguided restoration of the gold standard in the 1920s and the massive inter-governmental debts, including German reparations, resulting from World War I.

***

Still, striking differences separate now from then. The biggest is that governments -- unencumbered by the gold standard -- have eased credit, propped up financial institutions and increased spending to arrest an economic free fall. The Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund have made loans available to emerging-market countries to offset the loss of private credit. Nor is there anything like the international rancor that followed World War I and impeded cooperation: In 1931, the French balked at rescuing Austria's biggest bank (Creditanstalt), whose failure triggered a chain reaction of European panics.

When countries left the gold standard -- the United States effectively did so in 1933 -- their economies began to recover. Some indicators now imply that the present decline is ebbing ("glimmers of hope," says President Obama). China shows similar signs of improvement. All this diminishes the dreary comparisons with the Depression. But if these omens prove false, a more somber conclusion could emerge.

The mistakes of the Depression were rooted in prevailing economic orthodoxies, which had been overtaken by new realities. The present policies likewise reflect today's orthodoxies. But what if they, too, turn out to be misguided because the world has moved on in ways that become obvious mostly in retrospect?

Bright Goes to Washington

2009-04-22T07:35:00.002-05:00

Give the Herald Bulletin's Bright unveils ‘Idea’ hybrid-electric car a read. It appears they actually sent a reporter to D.C. There is even a photo - a minivan with a different look.

They also have a website of their own here.

More news:
Bright Automotive unveils 100 mpg hybrid truck (AP)
Bright Automotive Unveils its "IDEA" (Inside Indiana Business)

UN World Digital Library

2009-04-22T07:17:00.001-05:00

U.N. Launches World Digital Library - washingtonpost.com

PARIS, April 20 -- A globe-spanning U.N. digital library seeking to display and explain the wealth of all human cultures has gone into operation on the Internet, serving up mankind's accumulated knowledge in seven languages for students around the world.

***

The site (www.wdl.org) has put up the Japanese work that is considered the first novel in history, for instance, along with the Aztecs' first mention of the Christ child in the New World and the works of ancient Arab scholars piercing the mysteries of algebra, each entry flanked by learned commentary. "There are many one-of-a-kind documents," Billington said in an interview.

Interesting but my first impression is that it is a bit bare. Listening to a video on Jefferson's A Summary View of the Rights of British America.

Rural Rental Housing Association of Indiana

2009-04-21T10:25:00.001-05:00

Here is an association I never heard of but might be of more interest, Rural Rental Housing Association of Indiana

RRHA is a not-for-profit trade association established in 1983 of approximately 300 property management companies in the state of Indiana, from single owner, corporation, partnership and other organizations which own one or more Rural Affordable Housing project(s), or which is a public housing authority or a full-time employee of either of the agencies, representing over 15,000 Affordable Housing apartment units.

RRHA is the only association that solely represents the needs of the rural rental housing industry in Indiana, through education, networking, promoting professionalism, initiating the cooperation and exchange of information among our membership, relating important industry information, and encouraging ethical practices within the Affordable Housing industry. RRHA is committed to providing a respected voice for its members, and it regularly meets with key members of USDA Rural Development to discuss the Section 515 program.

Obama Economic Theory

2009-04-21T10:15:00.001-05:00

I think the idea is sound but I wonder how it will be executed. What I am learning from this economic crisis is just how unstable we have been these past few years. We keep jumping from fad to fad, being told this way to prosperity. Sounds like a return to tradtional - conservative? - values - of hard work, steady work.

Obama plans to regulate new 'bubbles'

But what Obama rarely says about ending the “cycle of bubble and bust” is this: He’s prepared to intervene to make sure that kind of red-hot growth doesn’t occur.

And he’s willing to do it with added government regulation if needed to prevent any one sector of the economy from getting out of balance – the way the dot-com boom did in the 1990s and the real-estate market did earlier this decade.

According to Austan Goolsbee, a key Obama economic adviser, the president plans to focus on stopping bubbles along with preventing busts. And in an interview with POLITICO, Goolsbee said the administration will be on the lookout for new bubbles, like the tech stocks or housing prices.

If new threats are spotted, he said Obama would use “regulatory oversight to prevent guys who want to make a quick buck from doing real harm to the economy. ... That is what it means to get out of the bubble-and-bust cycle.”

It’s a controversial and largely untested idea – one that involves government intervention in the economy to a degree that recent presidents have been unwilling or unable to impose. There would be great political risks for Obama, particularly after the depths of this painful recession, and it would open him up to criticism that he is trying to squelch the free market.

Two Views on The Economy - Theory Kind of Stuff

2009-04-21T07:54:00.002-05:00

Not one that I will necessarily agree with:

The Becker-Posner Blog: Is the Stock Market an "Efficient" Market?--Posner

But what about stock market bubbles? The explanation may lie in the fact that under Knightian uncertainty, often the best, though not a good, predictor of the future is the immediate past. If there is no weather forecasting, probably the best guess as to tomorrow's weather is that it will be similar to today's. If stock prices are rising, this suggests that something is happening to make people think that corporate profits will be greater in the foreseeable future. One might counter by asking why, if investors are expecting stock prices to continue rising, prices don't immediately jump to their peak value. But there is some inertia in trading, and, more important, no one can know the market peak in advance; for if everyone knew that, no one would sell at the current price or buy at the peak price, and trading would come to a halt.

And one that I will. Sorry but I think Milton Friedman is overrated.

Surely You're Kidding, Mr. Friedman

First, another "New Economy" theory? Please. Remember 10 years ago when we were all being told that the Dot Com Boom had changed all the rules? Turns out it hadn't. And none of the innovations Thomas is banging the drum for now will change them either. New tools? Yes. New rules? No.

Second, just what kind of crystal balls do you think the venture capital people have, Thomas? I remember reading one of the tech tabloids that were all around Seattle during the Dot Com Boom and looking at a cartoon of a scruffy teenager announcing that he had created a website for his cat and then watching the suits line up to dump money on him. It was about that bad. And of course the VC people also made the real estate bubble possible. Let's just say they haven't proved infallible in locating long-term investments.

Third, and here's the kicker, your economy isn't even real, let alone sustainable, if all it produces is electrons and documents. We have a textbook case in the United Arab Emirates right now: Dubai and its "New Economy" are having to be saved from ruin by Abu Dhabi and that dirty, old school dinosaur stuff it pumps. If you want an economy that lasts more than ten years, you need to make stuff: food, tools, stuff you can touch, stuff you can pick up, and yes, stuff you can drive around in.

Muncie Arts Festival

2009-04-20T13:32:00.001-05:00

I suppose Anderson would worry too much about its failed Florentine city project, but read Muncie to throw huge arts event and wonder just how much money and recognition this will bring to Muncie.

"Just a year later, Bailey had the chance to prove it. When the Indiana Arts Commission asked cities to apply to host the 2009 awards, Bailey and other Muncie community leaders, including Mayor Sharon McShurley, jumped on the opportunity. And the commission liked what they heard -- Muncie was chosen to host the fall event -- just the second time in the award's history that it will be celebrated outside of Indianapolis.

And this year, it's going to be bigger than ever.

Instead of just hosting the awards Sept. 25, members of the local steering committee have decided to create a three-day event."

Thank You, Tim Livesay

2009-04-20T10:05:00.000-05:00

Lee’s Theater gets second chance

A month ago, Pendleton resident Tim Livesay purchased the building hoping to use it for his company, Low Cost Mobility Services.

When a location more suitable for Livesay’s needs became available, the businessman decided not to unload the theater, but to give it back to the community.

Though he has not yet removed the Lee’s Theater lettering from the building, Livesay has renamed the facility the Ridge Crossing Auditorium.

Now let us use it wisely and well.

Local Banks Doing Good

2009-04-20T08:03:00.000-05:00

Local banks keep lending strong with TARP

First Merchants President and CEO Mike Rechin said that bank would probably repurchase its $116 million worth of stock within two or three years but had no immediate plans to do so, predicting the economy would not turn around in the next year.

“Our original interest was it gives you the capital to try to be an active lender in the community,” Rechin said. “I don’t think the balance of this year is likely to get a lot stronger economically, so I like having access to the capital.”

Locally, Mike Baker, who is regional president of First Merchants in the Madison County area, can use the extra capital to provide for any type of lending, from mortgages to small business loans.

Rechin said First Merchants, headquartered in Muncie, probably wouldn’t have a problem lending the money even if it didn’t participate in TARP, but the extra funds would help the bank if the recession continues.

“We were well capitalized before the money,” he said. “I don’t think we would have a problem, but the safety cushion that the excess capital provides makes me very confident that even if the recession lasts until 2010, that we’re going to continue to be a real consistent source of banking services for our customers.”

Anyone want to bet that their lending standards were a bit different than those used by Citigroup, Wells Fargo, etc?

Small Midwestern Cities Are Dying?

2009-04-20T07:43:00.000-05:00

Oh, boy. Too many response I can make to this. Like, we did not know this? You think you have seen backwaters - wait till you see Elwood! (That is an inside joke for my Madison County readers.)

Seriously, we probably need to be reminded of this possibility. Keep us from the addiction of false nostalgia. Read the solutions, too.

Warning: Small Midwestern cities are dying:

"But a lot of them will decline into backwaters, cut out of the global conversation, lived in by people who are too poor, too uneducated to afford anything better," Longworth said. Some will become ghettos, he added.

In introducing Longworth, Tom Kinghorn, treasurer of Ball State University, said Longworth's book Caught in the Middle: American's Heartland in the Age of Globalism, was "heartbreakingly familiar to many of us." Kinghorn spoke of "failing schools," "hollowed-out cities," "sometimes clueless politicians" and other problems.

The reasons for the decline of the Rust Belt are well known, Longworth said. They include high wages and relatively low skills, the rise of the Sun Belt, the loss of jobs to Mexico, Japanese superiority in the making of automobile, televisions and other products and globalization, including the Internet and the addition of several billion new workers from relatively poor countries.

There are solutions offered and I think they could be implemented here:

Longworth offered some answers: new technology, including green energy like wind, solar and biofuels; community colleges that teach 21st century skills; communities like Steubenville, Ohio, that are willing to link to big cities, even those like Pittsburgh that are in other states; embracing immigrants and public transportation like high-speed and light rail.

"I'd like to see this Midwest region take a truly regional approach to its problems and solutions," Longworth said. "Some of the Midwest's tired old towns and cities may not survive in any real sense. But those that do won't do it by relying on their own dwindling resources, by staying proud and independent, by refusing cooperation with other towns and cities.

Our political leadership needs to realize we must change, that the idea that if you want change then leave the state is dead.

We need to ask why Anderson and Muncie do not collaborate more.

We need to ask if our schools are training us into this backwater or not.

Maybe This Is Why ACS Has Money Problems?

2009-04-20T06:20:00.000-05:00

No, it is not the only reason and probably not a major reason, but come on - this kind of discount on the price of real estate says something aobut the business judgmetn of the ACS Board.

ACS land sale gets heated

Irma Stewart, the only black member of the ACS board, argued that it would contradict the board’s cost-saving efforts to hand land over for a fraction of the price, but board members P.T. Morgan and Keith Millikan spoke out in support of the sale.

“I do believe that we are in need of housing for the elderly,” Morgan said, arguing that the school district recently sold North Anderson Elementary School to the city parks department with the belief that it would better the community, much like an assisted-living facility would.

Due to its position on the west side of town, the assisted-living facility would likely serve Anderson’s black residents, but the idea of selling land at such a low cost did not sit well with Stewart. “You can always come up with a story that says we need to do this because it helps black people.”

Listening to MSNBC About Obama and Ortega

2009-04-20T06:14:00.003-05:00

Joe Scarborough equating Ortega with Putin. Saying FDR, LBJ, Carter would not have listened to Ortega's diatribe. I did not catch the name of the woman who said what I sat here thinking: Ortega is a flea. People ignore fleas. My mother had two sayings that seem to apply here: 1) consider the source and 2) in one ear and out the other.

(I heard somewhere over the weekend that Ortega was to give a five minute speech and it turned into a 50 minute one and that annoyed many. I think the conservatives are making mountains out of molehills.)

NASA Report Helping Scottish Windfarms, Where Now Indiana?

2009-04-20T06:06:00.001-05:00

The Scottish Sunday Herald reports that their wind farms might make more money and energy than expected, Windfall

THE UK offshore wind industry could be worth £300 million to £400m more than expected each year after climate specialists discovered a substantial rise in summer wind speeds over the past 20 years, the Sunday Herald can exclusively reveal.

The news is likely to be a great relief to the UK and Scottish governments and climate campaigners at a time when major investors' enthusiasm for offshore wind has been waning, with multinationals including Shell having withdrawn altogether.

The new piece of research by Edinburgh-based Atmos Consulting and Nasa suggests that wind farms will produce much more electricity each year than expected.

What The GM Bankruptcy Could Do

2009-04-19T21:56:00.001-05:00

I have made comment on here before about how dangerous will be a GM bankruptcy. Anderson's Herald Bulletin brought all this out quite well in GM bankruptcy would threaten city

Ward mentions companies in Anderson — like Taditel, on Eighth and John streets — that once were suppliers to GM and its affiliated companies. Now the companies are left with a large manufacturing capacity and no customers, forced to retool their business.

Many companies went under or took great hits when GM left town, but those that survived still stand to lose more if the auto giant goes bankrupt.

***

In Madison County, where 25,000 GM employees once worked, the buying power of the company’s retirees is great. Many made high wages as members of the United Auto Workers and have enjoyed comfortable retirements with their pensions.

GM’s bankruptcy, however, could put many of those retirees in a tight spot.

“We’ve got a situation that’s almost like a divorce, except for the fact that we’ve still got a huge payroll coming in here from retirees,” Ward said. “For the sake of everybody, I hope they don’t (file for bankruptcy), and I don’t know whether they will or not.”

GM has not said how its bankruptcy would affect retirees’ pensions, but Ward guesses it could involve a federal program that insures pensions, which likely would leave retirees with about half their monthly GM income.

***

Without pension dollars flowing to local retirees, businesses in Madison County that depend on that money could be in trouble.

“GM filing for complete bankruptcy would have a disastrous effect on elements of Anderson,” said city Economic Development Director Linda Dawson. “Any time you affect the income coming into your community through wages or retirement benefits, you affect the town and spending power. Obviously businesses are affected because they won’t be able to utilize those spending dollars that they’re used to depending upon. It ends up having a snowball effect.”

I hope this puts into perspective for those glibly telling us we - and that is the whole country - can afford a GM bankruptcy.

Reminder: On Tuesday Bright Automotive Takes Its Car to DC

2009-04-19T10:30:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the Herald Bulletin for this reminder, Bright Automotive to debut its vehicle in D.C.

On Tuesday, Anderson-based Bright Automotive will unveil a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle it calls the “Idea” in Washington, D.C. The vehicle is expected to get 100 miles per gallon and was developed at Bright’s headquarters at the Flagship Enterprise Center.

But this makes me think that we have backed the R & D but not get the production.

Should Bright get the go-ahead to begin production, it will be looking for a permanent home and Staley believes it will take the cooperation of government officials at the local, state and federal levels to keep the company in Anderson.

Not coincidentally, several local officials will be accompanying the Bright contingent to Washington: Anderson Economic Development Director Linda Dawson, Anderson Deputy Mayor Greg Graham, Rob Sparks of the Madison County Economic Development Corporation and Jerry Bridges of the Madison County Council of Governments.

“It’s ours to lose,” he said.

Assuming that this project is all it is being sold as being, what do we need to do to make sure we do not lose it?

"homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead"

2009-04-19T09:09:00.004-05:00

We can hope, Mr. Rich. Brain dead and depopulated does not mean that hate has become love or even neutrality. About this take a look at Judith Warner's Dude, You’ve Got Problems.

More from Frank Rich's The Bigots’ Last Hurrah:

The Obamas’ dog had longer legs on cable than the news from Iowa and Vermont. CNN’s weekly press critique, “Reliable Sources,” inquired why. The gay blogger John Aravosis suggested that many Americans are more worried about their mortgages than their neighbors’ private lives. Besides, Aravosis said, there are “only so many news stories you can do showing guys in tuxes.”
As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.”
Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right’s two major arguments against marriage equality. The unanimous ruling of the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court proved that the issue is not merely a bicoastal fad. The decision, written by Mark Cady, a Republican appointee, was particularly articulate in explaining that a state’s legalization of same-sex marriage has no effect on marriage as practiced by religions. “The only difference,” the judge wrote, is that “civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law.”

Rich mentions Stephen Colbert's video and it is worth watching. Stephen Colbert probably did more to demolish the homophobes than all of our serious discussions. Sorry, could not get it to embed - go give it a look.

The Meaning of Life

2009-04-18T18:04:00.000-05:00

Heard Tom T. Hall sing this decades ago. I fell over laughing and thinking, yeah, this is the meaning of life or as good an answer for now.

Thought for the Day

2009-04-18T08:04:00.000-05:00

As Benjamin Franklin, that ultimate Enlightenment sage, conveyed in both his actions and words at the convention, compromisers may not make great heroes but they do make great democracies."

Book Review - 'Plain, Honest Men - The Making of the American Constitution,' by Richard Beeman - Review - NYTimes.com:

Innovating Health Care

2009-04-18T07:21:00.000-05:00

An interview with Clay Christensen on Disrupting Health Care — HBS Working Knowledge:

"An acclaimed author and expert on the development and commercialization of technological and business innovation, HBS professor Clayton Christensen has written a new book aimed at changing our national conversation about health care. In The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care (read an excerpt), Christensen and his coauthors, the late Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang (MBA '06), focus not on how the United States will pay for health care in the coming decades, but rather on targeting innovations that will make health care both more affordable and more effective in the future."

Indiana and The Civil War

2009-04-18T06:52:00.000-05:00

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 8.:

"The State election of Indiana occurs on the 11th. of October, and the loss of it to the friends of the Government would go far towards losing the whole Union cause. The bad effect upon the November election, and especially the giving the State Government to those who will oppose the war in every possible way, are too much to risk, if it can possibly be avoided. The draft proceeds, notwithstanding its strong tendency to lose us the State. Indiana is the only important State, voting in October, whose soldiers cannot vote in the field. Any thing you can safely do to let her soldiers, or any part of them, go home and vote at the State election, will be greatly in point. They need not remain for the Presidential election, but may return to you at once. This is, in no sense, an order, but is merely intended to impress you with the importance, to the army itself, of your doing all you safely can, yourself being the judge of what you can safely do. Yours truly A. LINCOLN"

How strange that we now vote consistently with the States of the Confederacy.

For Everyone's Amusement - Lindsay Lohan Looking for a Date

2009-04-18T06:45:00.000-05:00

Her acting does not impress me but it might if she keeps on doing things like this:

Lindsay Lohan's eHarmony Profile from Lindsay Lohan

Interesting Post on the Culture Wars

2009-04-17T10:16:00.000-05:00

pacifism and the culture wars | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

It’s time for the shrill, discordant politics and alienating rhetoric of the culture warriors to be replaced by true, genuine compassion and the necessary action that requires. Yes, we need to “save marriage” but in the sense that we need to save it for all Americans, not just straight Americans, otherwise we really can’t remain pro-life, because that cause will be lost as well.

Hate and fear have been the key tactics of the Right. After a while, they become tiresome but remain self-justifying to their practitioners. For them, the fomenting of fear and hate becomes their purpose rather solving the problems they claim to fight. time for the rest of us to find a solution to our societal problems.

Hubris Reminder

2009-04-17T09:22:00.001-05:00

Reading this I substituted neo-con for Rostow:

Milne gives the reader a good view of Rostow's strengths (his intelligence, persuasiveness, and governmental experience) and weaknesses (his overconfidence and refusal to compromise). Rostow's unwavering belief in his own polemics and his incredible overconfidence, coupled with his refusal to modify his ideas based on alternative perspectives, were, in Milne's estimation, not just self-deluding, but reckless at best, and outright dangerous at worst. Milne skillfully demonstrates that Rostow had very little understanding of Southeast Asian political or cultural history, and was analytically deficient in perceiving the conflict as a nationalist civil war first, and a war between communism and a fledgling democracy second. The fact that Rostow could consistently convince LBJ to follow a certain policy path, when others could not, made Rostow one of the most important individuals associated with the Vietnam War and the ultimate American defeat. His influence and contribution, the author believes, was easily as important as that of McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, or Dean Rusk. As for being "America's Rasputin," Milne ultimately finds that Harriman's view on Rostow was correct, that his advice was an overwhelmingly negative factor in American foreign policy decisions concerning Vietnam between 1960 and 1969. However, one also has to fault LBJ for allowing a person with Rostow's personality to have so much sway in policy making. By the same token, Milne contends in chapter 6 that LBJ appointed Rostow as national security advisor in 1966 partly because he wanted to send an unambiguous message, both at home and abroad, that a harder American military approach was necessary in Vietnam, and that the United States intended to win in Southeast Asia

I like to think that Obama is smart enough to avoid this pitfall, but are we, the people?

What is Left of Guide Lamp

2009-04-17T07:51:00.009-05:00

Or Fisher Guide. I guess I show my age by calling the place Guide Lamp. A little bit more fun with my digital camera. The first set of photos show the area west of Martin Luther King.

This set looks east from MLK.

What comes next?

Seeking Feedback

2009-04-17T07:37:00.000-05:00

I am adding a new application for comments. I would like to know if this makes it easier or not to make comments. (Yes, I do not like comments - I wish there were more). Let me know if it is liked or not. Thanks to those who help.

Indiana Senate Democrats Promoting Green Industry

2009-04-17T07:02:00.001-05:00

Take a listen to this video from our Senate Democrats. Does this not sound liek real change, a more practical change than ever was proposed by Mitch Daniels? Take a look at the video here.

Iraq, KBR and What Our Tax Dollars Bought

2009-04-17T07:02:00.000-05:00

Not heard much of this Stateside and bit surprised that How war is big business has not angered more people:

"American taxpayers footing the $125 billion bill for rebuilding Iraq are understandably shocked by recent revelations that senior military officers are under investigation for alleged bribery and corruption, on the evidence of a US arms dealer shot dead in 2004. In truth, they don’t know the half of it. Much of the rest they can learn from this book.

The US military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) has just been awarded a $35 million contract for further electrical work in Iraq, despite the fact that it is currently facing allegations of criminal bribery in Nigeria and the wrongful deaths of Americans at sundry overseas bases."

Wading Into the Deep Water of Collateralized Debt Obligations

2009-04-16T19:21:00.000-05:00

The Economics of Structured Finance — HBS Working Knowledge: "

This paper investigates the spectacular rise and fall of structured finance. HBS professor Joshua Coval, Princeton professor Jakub Jurek, and HBS professor Erik Stafford begin by examining how the structured finance machinery works. They construct simple examples of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that show how pooling and tranching a collection of assets permits credit enhancement of the senior claims. They then explore the challenge faced by rating agencies, examining, in particular, the parameter and modeling assumptions that are required to arrive at accurate ratings of structured finance products. They conclude with an assessment of what went wrong and the relative importance of rating agency errors, investor credulity, and perverse incentives and suspect behavior on the part of issuers, rating agencies, and borrowers."

Economic Development: Ideas for Indiana Out of Florida

2009-04-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

From The Atlantic Business Channel comes Renewing Florida that makes me think our local ideas have been a bit threadbare (regardless of Mitch Daniel's "boldness"):

"It is worth emphasizing that Florida has chosen not to draw upon universities or government laboratories as it develops these new campuses. Rather, the state and its counties have asked private research institutes to replicate their own outstanding successes. This is a key element in Florida's strategy: private research centers have more more flexibility in creating partnerships with industry than do most universities and government laboratories.

To that end, the state of Florida has set aside land for new high-tech and biotech companies adjacent to each of the new research centers. I hope that this second phase of the plan will not be too badly hurt by the current economic crisis. (See my previous post on this site, 'High Tech at Risk.')"

Reviving Antitrust Law?

2009-04-16T07:29:00.000-05:00

Every time I heard a business called too big to fail, I wondered if we would be hearing about antitrust law. Monopolies have never been favored except by those having a piece of the monopoly. I seem to recall Adam Smith warning of cartels, monopolies. Now, we have Trustbusting 2.0? from The Nation:

Recently, much of my thinking has involved antitrust policy. Instead of imposing after-the-fact regulations on corporations, why not pass a new antitrust policy that limits the size to which companies can grow? Current antitrust law limits a variety of anticompetitive behaviors, like price fixing, and is focused on consumer welfare and market manipulation. But antitrust could become a tool for limiting size qua size, not just size when it becomes anticompetitive. It would require a major overhaul, but in the long term a size-based antitrust policy might actually be simpler than the complicated and often unworkable measures of market share and examinations of inchoate consumer needs.

Why? Because economies of scale, which work well for creating widgets, are very dangerous when it comes to influencing political decision-making. Political power amassed by concentrated financial power leads to serious distortions in political decision-making, so that Congress can pass absurd, non-responsive legislation that gives illogical copyright extensions, dangerous environmental licenses, and tax breaks to those who least need it. Antitrust law now limits anticompetitive behavior as between companies within an industry; it could limit corporate power in the political sphere by creating a default maximum size.

***

As Teddy Roosevelt said, "The great corporations ... are the creatures of the State." If these creatures are causing massive instability, inequality, or environmental ruin, then we ought modify them. Importantly, this is not an anti-corporate argument (to be anti-corporate actually buys into the reification of the corporation as it currently exists.) I happen to think corporations serve incredibly valuable social purposes. But those values are radically limited if we stop understanding the corporate form as deeply flexible, putty in our hands if we want it to be--a flexible tool for human, democratic, societal ends.

Ball State Grads Starting Fortville Business

2009-04-16T06:53:00.000-05:00

Indianapolis Business Examiner: Ball State Grads Start Internet Apparel Company:

"Fortville, IN - Two (2) former Ball State students have started a company that has a web site that provides a venue for people to submit their original thoughts and ideas that might end up on an organic t-shirt. Users have the opportunity to vote which submissions of hope, optimism and humor that will be printed for sale. Contest winners will split up to $5,000 between themselves and their favorite charity and 10% of all net profits for Bring The Hope go to charitable organizations.

For more info: http://www.bringthehope.com

Kevin Smith Is Back

2009-04-15T22:48:00.000-05:00

Yes, our former may is to be found at Kevin Smith Reports

Kevin S. Smith was mayor of Anderson, Indiana for four progressive years, formerly president of the County Council, and now a business owner, media producer and radio host. He has much to observe about government, economic development,
taxation and quality of life -not to mention global news events that affect Hoosiers!

Sometimes, I Just Get in This Kind of Mood

2009-04-15T17:38:00.000-05:00

Dang me.

About The Somali Pirates - Why We Cannot Send in Stephen Decatur

2009-04-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

Besides Decatur being dead, the BBC explains some limits on just shooting the b*****ds in Could 19th-Century plan stop piracy?

However, the resolutions that made these actions permissible (1838 and 1846) also contain restrictions.

Everything has to be done in accordance with "international law" and this is interpreted as complying with the conditions of the International Law of the Sea Convention.

This convention, in article 105, does permit the seizure of a pirate ship, but article 110 lays down that, in order to establish that a ship is indeed a pirate vessel, the warship - and it may only be a warship - has to send a boat to the suspected ship first and ask for its papers.

This is hardly a recipe for a Denman or Decatur-type action.

Add to this legal restriction the relative lack of warships in the seas off Somalia - more than there were, but still insufficient - and the reluctance to tackle the pirates in their home bases, throw in the chaos in Somalia, where there is no effective government, and you have perfect conditions for piracy.

Of national Healthcare and Much More

2009-04-15T11:48:00.000-05:00

I like much of Of laissez-faire capitalism and such things from a column in The Abilene Reporter-News (yes, from Texas). But I especially liked this paragraph. probably becuase it is something I have said for years to my friends in the medical field:

"Taxpayers are told that under socialized medicine they would have to wait to see a doctor or to get certain medicines. Today, taxpayers wait for a doctor's appointment and must wait to learn if their overpriced health insurance covers their problem or prescriptions. Health insurance and HMOs aren't designed to care for illness; they are designed to make money for those who own the companies. Their charges are included with those of the doctor, who is the only one licensed to practice medicine. Insurance companies may refuse to cover or cancel anyone who they think might get sick."

Mitch's Financial Bungling

2009-04-15T08:34:00.000-05:00

I am seriously surprised that not much has been made of Critics: Welfare changes cost state $100M so far:

"The 12 counties including the cities of Kokomo, Anderson, Muncie and Marion saw food-stamp participation fall 3.5 percent in the 12 months beginning November 2007 after the state took away individual welfare case managers and introduced call centers and the Internet as tools for determining eligibility, said the leaders of senior advocacy organizations and others.

In counties still operating under the old system with case managers for each household, food-stamp participation grew 14.3 percent over the same period.

A spokesman for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration said the critics' numbers were wrong and that food-stamp participation has increased in modernized counties."

***

One of the critics, former Vigo County Welfare Director Glenn Cardwell, said the $100 million in lost economic activity figure represented a benchmark because backers of the welfare changes in the Daniels administration have said it would cost the state that much to cancel the IBM-ACS contract.

Cardwell calculated that figure by estimating the economic activity that would have been generated if participation in food stamps and TANF had grown in the modernized counties as they had in counties still under the old system.

***

FSSA spokesman Marcus Barlow said participation in food stamps has increased in the counties where welfare has been modernized.

"We disagree that people that are eligible for food stamps aren't getting them," Barlow said.

Barlow provided numbers that challenged the critics' without directly contradicting them. The critics said food-stamp participation fell from 13,450 to 7,956 from November 2007 to November 2008. Barlow countered that food-stamp use in all of the 59 modernized counties grew from 111,115 in February 2007 to 112,263 in December 2008.

Book Reviews - Europe and Economics

2009-04-15T08:20:00.000-05:00

These come courtesy of H-Net Reviews

Barry Eichengreen. The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond. The Princeton Economic History of the Western World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 504 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-12710-1; $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-12710-1.
Reviewed by Frank B. (Ben) Tipton (Department of International Business, University of Sydney)
Published on H-German (March, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
Eichengreen argues that for a very long

period Europe's institutional structures have remained constant. These "corporatist" or "neocorporatist" institutions, according to Eichengreen, have three components: industry associations representing employers, peak organizations representing workers, and national government agencies involved in economic planning. During the period of rapid growth governments channeled capital to industry. Unions moderated their wage demands in return for training and job stability offered by employers and social security programs offered by governments. These institutions worked well during the period of recovery following the war when it was necessary to target a range of interdependent industries simultaneously. They also worked well during the 1950s and 1960s, when Europeans could exploit technologies previously developed by the United States, a process Eichengreen idiosyncratically calls "extensive" growth (p. 6, n. 9). However, they have worked less well since the 1970s when it has become more necessary to apply innovative new technologies, which Eichengreen labels "intensive" growth. In this new period employers' associations have sought protection for declining industries, government bureaucrats have not been able to select among emerging technologies, and labor organizations have become impatient and pushed for higher wages and resisted cuts in welfare programs. European economies, relatively competitive in the 1950s and 1960s, became less competitive after the 1970s and have remained so. Currently, Eichengreen concludes, if there is no change in their corporatist institutions, Europeans face a bleak future: "[T]hese institutions, which were ideally suited to a period of extensive growth, must now be adapted to a new era" (p. 425).

***

Other problems plague Eichengreen's analysis as well. Growth and productivity did slow after 1970 in both western and eastern Europe, of course, but we still need to ask whether specific causes were to be found in European institutions, or whether the slowdown reflected broader trends in the world economy. As it happens, similar measures show a slowdown in both aggregate growth and productivity in both the United States and Japan in the early 1970s, and, as Eichengreen notes, the United States experienced extremely slow increases in productivity in the 1980s and early 1990s. But, if common outcomes have common causes, and if the institutional structures of Europe, Japan, and the United States were very different, then something else besides institutional variations must have caused the shared slowdown. A large literature derived from the work of 1920s Russian economist Nicolai Kondratieff places the upswing of the 1950s and 1960s and the downswing of the 1970s and 1980s in the context of long waves of economic development (for instance: A. Tylecote, The Long Wave and the World Economy: The Current Crisis in Historical Perspective [1993]), but Eichengreen does not cite these works even to refute them. The world economy could now be entering a new upswing based on information and communications technologies, but we do not know as yet. However, we do know that the improvement in United States productivity growth in the late 1990s was largely confined to the computer industry, retailing, and banking, while Europe has done better in telecommunications, and relatively better in automobiles, another set of facts that Eichengreen notes, but which sits uncomfortably with his blanket insistence that Europe's economies must adopt institutional structures more like those of the United States

***

Very few people enter Eichengreen's picture, except for the political leaders of Britain, France, and Germany, and some of the famous advocates of European unity. The only business executive mentioned by name may be Gerrit Wagner of Royal Dutch Shell, but only in his role as chair of a government committee that supported the reform program mentioned above. Eichengreen thinks entrepreneurs play a critical role in development and believes they should receive "lavish U.S.-style rewards" (p. 402), but although Joseph Schumpeter is cited (p. 154), no entrepreneurs appear. As Eichengreen notes, the venture capital industry is more highly developed in the United States than in Europe, and some European countries regulate new businesses quite heavily, but the European Union and individual countries support entrepreneurial small- and medium-sized enterprises with extensive schemes that Eichengreen does not consider. Consideration of the large literature on the definition, emergence, and variations in entrepreneurial behavior would have added depth to this part of the story.

Hans-Werner Sinn. Can Germany Be Saved?: The Malaise of the World's First Welfare State. Boston: MIT Press, 2007. xvi + 338 pp. ISBN 978-0-262-19558-4; $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-262-19558-4.
Reviewed by Georg Menz (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
Published on H-German (March, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

In the fall of 2008, more than thirty-six years after Chilean soldiers stormed the presidential palace in Santiago, sweeping away democratically elected president Salvador Allende and ushering in the status of this remote South American nation as the world's first test tube for an ideology pioneered by Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, the long-cherished wisdom of the supremacy of unregulated market forces was buried at last in the rubble of the disintegrating finance and banking landscape in the financial districts of New York City and London. Implemented, beloved, and even idolized by the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan governments and by Western and non-Western policymakers around the globe, neoliberalism attracted an extraordinarily loyal following and radically recast the role of the state and the regulation of the market. For more than three decades, this approach had dominated the academic discipline of economics, and in Anglo-American countries it constituted the economic common sense for politicians of all stripes, lately even for those of the center-left parties.

***
It was always naïve to assume that Germany would remain immune to the siren calls of this reactionary doctrine. Hayek spent the final part of his career at the University of Freiburg, an intellectual center of ordeo-liberalism, associated with writers such as Wilhelm Röpke and Walther Eucken. Contrary to popular wisdom, the postwar Federal Republic was much more "market" economy than "social," and the Social Democratic components that created the awe-inspiring Modell Deutschland of the 1970s were added much later and as a result of considerable union pressure. One of the centers of neoliberal thought and policy advocacy has long been the Institute for World Economics at the University of Kiel. And then there is, at the other end of the republic, Hans-Werner Sinn's Ifo Research Institute in Munich. Sinn's advocacy of neoliberal reforms of the German political economy has been nothing short of monumental. He is a prolific publicist and makes frequent appearances on television talk shows. Can Germany still be saved? is the unfortunate translation of his also fairly alarmist Ist Deutschland noch zu retten? (2005), proffered as part of a flurry of popular treatises in the early 2000s that were singularly pessimistic about the future of organized Rhineland-style capitalism.

This book is thus clearly aimed at a mass audience and not the scholarly community. It has to be seen as part and parcel of the vociferous public relations debate which organized business and neoliberal pro-business think tanks such as Ifo or the employer-financed Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft and politicians sympathetic to the cause have engaged in since former president Roman Herzog's infamous "Ruck" speech in 1996. Neoliberal advocacy is big business in Germany. The metal sector employer association Gesamtmetall is underwriting a massive public relations campaign for neoliberal change, coordinated by the Cologne-based Institut Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (INSM), which draws on an annual budget of nine million euros.[3] Sinn has made appearances at several INSM-sponsored events. The institute sponsors public events, commissions journalistic reports, places advertisements in newspapers, and coordinates the journalistic activities of its prominent members. The foundation of media conglomerate Bertelsmann is equally active in funding neoliberally tinted "research," such as an annual country ranking in terms of "competitiveness." It has been consulted by both the Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel governments and left its fingerprints on the notorious Hartz agenda, the most serious legislative assault on the foundations of the German welfare state.

****

The author's analysis is not compelling; his "solutions" are wrong-headed or even disastrous. The ideological debt to Thatcherism--and, more disturbingly, evidence of lessons clearly not learned from fascism--is clear. He makes no reflection on the obvious fallacies of neoliberalism. Clearly, as last fall's crisis has demonstrated so dramatically, the economy is too important to leave it to economists. Sinn still wants to party like it's 1979. Let us hope no one else cares to join him.

Keep An Eye on Infrastructure

2009-04-14T22:33:00.000-05:00

Check out Recovery.gov:

"Estimated Distribution of Highway Infrastructure Funds
* 'Enhancement' is a legally defined term for projects such as sidewalk repairs, bicycle paths, and beautification projects. Enhancements do not involve vehicle or mass transit related items.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration
Rebuilding America
On Tuesday, March 3, 2009, President Obama and Transportation Secretary LaHood announced the release of $27 billion in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help states create a 21st century infrastructure. Learn more about where your taxpayer dollars are going."

Cuba

2009-04-14T18:15:00.000-05:00

Obama wants to open up Cuba and he is working towards that goal: White House Announces Easing of Cuba Restrictions - NYTimes.com

The announcement, which is in line with Mr. Obama’s campaign pledge, is timed to coincide with his trip this week to Trinidad and Tobago for a gathering of Latin American and Caribbean leaders, where he may face calls to ease restrictions even further. Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are also urging the administration to do more, and are pursuing legislation that would allow all Americans, not just those with family ties to Cuba, to travel freely there.

Mr. Obama is not lifting the longstanding trade embargo with Cuba. But according to a senior administration official, who spoke anonymously in advance of Mr. Gibbs’s briefing, the president will use his executive authority to shift policy toward Cuba in three specific areas.

This was not such a big surprise: Obama will use spring summit to bring Cuba in from the cold | The Observer:

"President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America.

The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of 'Yankee' cooperation"

But not without the usual right wing fantasists doing their usual tap dancing for the Florida vote:

Marc A. Thiessen - The Embargo After the Castros - washingtonpost.com:

"The dumbest thing we could do today would be to enact legislation unilaterally lifting the embargo. Set aside questions about the embargo's efficacy. Like it or not, it is our only leverage, aside from our military, to affect the transition in Cuba. Why would we fritter away that leverage just as time prepares to do what the embargo could not -- bring about the end of the Castro regime? Fidel was never going to negotiate a loosening of repression in Cuba in exchange for a lifting of the travel ban and other trade restrictions. But those who succeed him will, and the Castro brothers will soon be gone. The question is: When that happens, what power will the United States have to encourage a democratic transition on the island? Instead of strengthening Raúl by lifting the embargo now, we should keep our powder dry and use it to strengthen democracy and influence his successor. The embargo has been in place for 47 years -- at this point, it would be foolish not to wait a little longer."

The Cuban Embargo has only hurt cigar smokers and professional baseball teams, but it stays because of Florida's electoral votes.

Scotland's Sunday Herald has some pictures showing what Cuban life is like now here. Castor would not have lasted this long if he had to contend with open and free trade with us.

Small Business and Taxes

2009-04-14T18:13:00.000-05:00

Finally someone has something rational to say about small businesses and tax. <The Small-Business Myth - washingtonpost.com

In fact, nearly all small-business and family-farm estates are already shielded from having to pay estate tax. If the estate tax were kept at its current level, as President Obama advocates, only 430 business or farm estates would owe any tax whatsoever in 2011, according to an estimate by the Brookings Institution-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center. Moreover, it's not true that these estates would be forced to liquidate to come up with enough money to pay the estate tax. At current levels, 13 family farms and 41 family-owned businesses would not have had enough liquid assets to satisfy estate taxes in 2005, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office. Even these would probably not have to be sold on account of a tax hit, because payments can be spread over a 14-year period.

***

Opponents of raising top marginal tax rates argue that this small slice of taxpayers is nonetheless responsible for generating a disproportionate share of small-business income -- about a quarter of the total, according to the Tax Policy Center -- and that higher rates would discourage entrepreneurship. As much as that seems like a matter of common sense, the evidence is far from clear. A 2006 study by Donald Bruce and Mohammed Mohsin found that "the top income tax rate has no economically significant effect" on entrepreneurship and that "it would take a 50-percentage-point cut in the top income tax rate to generate a one-percentage-point change in entrepreneurial activity." By that measure, the increase of three to five percentage points proposed by Mr. Obama hardly seems like a small-business job killer.

How Obama Is Not Making War on The Rich

2009-04-14T08:52:00.003-05:00

Just give Daniel Gross's The bogus GOP claim that Obama is making war on the rich from Slate Magazine a good reading:

"To hear conservatives tell it, you'd think mobs of shiftless welfare moms were marauding through the streets of Greenwich and Palm Springs, lynching bankers and hedge-fund managers, stringing up shopkeepers, and herding lawyers into internment camps. President Obama and his budgeteers, they say, have declared war on the rich."

Finally, there has been a near total absence of discussion of what higher rates will mean in the real world. Say you're a CNBC anchor, or a Washington Post columnist with a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, or a dentist, and you managed to cobble together $350,000 a year in income. You're doing quite well. If you subtract deductions for state and property taxes, mortgage interest and charitable deductions, and other deductions, the amount on which tax rates are calculated might total $300,000. What would happen if the marginal rate on the portion of your income above $250,000 were to rise from 33 percent to 36 percent? Under the old regime, you'd pay $16,500 in federal taxes on that amount. Under the new one, you'd pay $18,000. The difference is $1,500 per year, or $4.10 per day. Obviously, the numbers rise as you make more. But is $4.10 a day bleeding the rich, a war on the wealthy, a killer of innovation and enterprise? That dentist eager to slash her income from $320,000 to $250,000 would avoid the pain of paying an extra $2,100 in federal taxes. But she'd also deprive herself of an additional $70,000 in income!

The National Security State

2009-04-14T08:36:00.000-05:00

is it too big for Obama to overcome? Doug Masson over at Masson's Blog writes a bit about this in his Not Completely Transparent. After reading his post, I ran across the following from H-Net Reviews

Douglas T. Stuart. Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law That Transformed America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. 358 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-13371-3; $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-13371-3.

Reviewed by Diane Putney (Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense)
Published on H-War (March, 2009)
Commissioned by Janet G. Valentine

The National Security Bureaucracy: An Introduction

With Creating the National Security State, Douglas T. Stuart, professor of political science and international studies at Dickinson College, has written a provocative book focusing on the history of the National Security Act of 1947, that he believes is the most important piece of legislation in modern U.S. history after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After explaining the disagreements and compromises leading to congressional approval of the act and President Harry Truman's signature on July 26, 1947, Stuart traces the evolution or devolution of some of the entities the law authorized: the National Military Establishment, with its Office of the Secretary of Defense, Munitions Board, and Research and Development Board; the National Security Council; the Central Intelligence Agency; and the National Security Resources Board. The general scope of the volume ranges from 1937, the start of President Franklin Roosevelt's war preparedness campaign, to 1960, the final year of President Dwight Eisenhower's administration.

In his introduction, Stuart presents bibliographic analysis citing other books dealing with the post-World War II national security state, and compares and contrasts his volume to previous works. He singles out Michael Hogan's A Cross of Iron (1998) for showing the basis of early Cold War debates as disagreement between those with a new national security ideology and those who embraced a traditional ideology opposed to statism and militarism. Stuart disagrees with Hogan and presents his own thesis called the "Pearl Harbor system" to explain the nature of the postwar debates. Although he does not fully establish his thesis, he asserts that the Pearl Harbor attack was a "turning point in modern American history," sweeping away traditional concepts of national security that included suspicions about the dangers the nation faced from a large, peacetime army (p. 2). According to Stuart, "Pearl Harbor convinced the American people that preparing for the next sneak attack was everybody's business, all the time, at home and abroad. In the jargon of contemporary constructivist scholarship, America has been 'securitized' ever since" (p. 3).

I buy into this Pearl Harbor argument. Think back to the Bush and Cheney reaction to 9/11. Listen closely to what Cheney has been saying of late. What we have learned is that democracy suffers at the hand of national security concerns.

I would also point out that whenever anyone talks about taxes and their burden always omit any mention that we were on a war footing from 1947 to 1989. Reagan kept us on a war footing but cut taxes and created a huge deficit. That is worth thinking about, too.

So How Is Rahm Emanuel Doing?

2009-04-14T05:14:00.000-05:00

Sounds like any other Chief of Staff in Obama's Chief of Staff Grants Access, Gets Results from The Washington Post:

One admirer is Rep. Peter T. King, a New York Republican who got to know Emanuel during his House days. "There's a consensus among Republicans who can be objective that the president did a good thing in picking Rahm," King said. "He's tough, and he's really not that partisan. He doesn't think he's morally superior to Republicans, and that alone will get you far in this environment."

But then I always thought he was chosen to keep the Democrats in line more than beat up on Republicans.

Emanuel, a former member of the House Budget Committee, saw a way to meet Baucus halfway. Reconciliation instructions could be added but would not take effect until fall, giving Republicans time to show interest in compromise. Also, the language would cover only health care and education. Emanuel concluded that including Obama's cap-and-trade system to combat climate change "was a bridge too far." It would ask too much of vulnerable Democrats, given their fears about creating higher consumer electricity costs.

"We decided we would let the process work, but we wouldn't hold the process hostage" to Republican obstruction, Emanuel said. House leaders had been considering reconciliation and added the instructions to their budget. Before lawmakers left town last week for a spring recess, even Baucus conceded that reconciliation language in the conference report is probably a done deal.

***

Even GOP lawmakers praised the White House attention. "He always takes my calls," said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), a moderate who is wooed by Democrats on every major bill. She even considered voting for the budget.

When Snowe heard that Obama would visit Turkey at the end of his first overseas trip as president, the Greek American senator called Emanuel to ask that Obama meet with the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul.

Muncie - Child Abuse Vigil

2009-04-13T20:57:00.000-05:00

Vigil to prevent child abuse set for Tuesday | thestarpress.com | The Star Press

MUNCIE — The public is invited to join the Prevent Child Abuse Council of Delaware County to remember local victims of child abuse and neglect at a candlelight vigil at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Muncie City Hall auditorium.

Anderson News: Anderson Antique Mall Coming Down

2009-04-13T10:41:00.000-05:00

The Herald Bulletin reported on this last week under Downtown landmark set for demolition:

"The former Anderson Antique Mall, at the intersection of 14th and Main streets, will be demolished after the city takes bids for the project in May. The Anderson Redevelopment Commission approved on Tuesday the legal notice required for advertising for demolition bids.

The three-story brick building was an antique mall until about two years ago, Municipal Development Director Michael Widing said. Before that, it was a furniture store called Model Home Stores.

The city bought the property in November 2007 for $44,000, Widing said, but plans haven’t been completed for its use after the building is demolished.

“We’re still working on putting that together,” he said."

That last paragraph surprised me. I remember seeing a plan at City Hall for converting the entire block to some sort of bus/train complex. That makes sense is one looks at the condition of Pelletrino's and The Caboose. These bars have been shut down since Rodney Cummings shut them down in his prosecution of O'Neal.

Follow up on The Iowa Same-Sex Marriage Decision is Not Anti-Democratic

2009-04-13T10:17:00.002-05:00

Please read Don Sherfick's Iowa's impact on Indiana: my heart versus my head from Indiana Equality:

Besides, all this stuff about the “tyranny of an unelected activist judiciary” as the reason for a constitutional amendment is just so much disingenuous baloney (you won’t find that term in Black’s Law Dictionary). Once upon a time those pushing a prior version of their proposed amendment loudly claimed that it definitely wouldn’t keep the General Assembly from enacting civil unions. Now, although they’ve gone to great lengths to avoid pointing it out, their new measure would stop a popularly elected set of lawmakers from passing such legislation or anything near it.

Read My Lips: It AIN’T just about judges…that’s a convenient and misleading slogan…..what they really want is do is make it nearly impossible for future Hoosiers, already changing in their attitudes, to work the popular will concerning the civil rights of gay and lesbian couples. “The times, they are a changing”, and those who take upon themselves to permanently enshrine what they consider “God’s will” into the state’s highest legal document are getting frantic.

Obama and Israel

2009-04-13T08:56:00.000-05:00

As I get older, the more I wonder where our national interests diverge from Israel's interests and when Israel's interests counter our own. Israel Cries Wolf from The New York Times only strengthens my doubts.

"What’s critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu’s fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time. The president should read Trita Parsi’s excellent “Treacherous Alliance” as preparation.

The core strategic shift of Obama’s presidency has been away from the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric of the war on terror toward a rapprochement with the Muslim world as the basis for isolating terrorists.

That’s unsustainable if America or Israel find themselves at war with Muslim Persians as well as Muslim Arabs, and if Netanyahu’s intense-eyed attempt to suck America into a perpetuation of war-on-terror thinking prevails.

The only way to stop Iran going nuclear, and encourage reform of a repressive regime, is to get to the negotiating table. There’s time. Those “months” are still a couple of years. What Iran has accumulated is low-enriched uranium. You need highly-enriched uranium for a bomb. That’s a leap."

Warning: Law Talk - Constitutional Law

2009-04-13T07:02:00.001-05:00

Reading about Justice Ginsburg on Sunday morning in Ginsburg Shares Views on Influence of Foreign Law on Her Court, and Vice Versa and I wanted to comment. Here is what got me wanting to write:

“I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law,” Justice Ginsburg said in her comments on Friday.

***
Justice Ginsburg said the controversy was based on the misunderstanding that citing a foreign precedent means the court considers itself bound by foreign law as opposed to merely being influenced by such power as its reasoning holds.
“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article written by a professor?” she asked.
She added that the failure to engage foreign decisions had resulted in diminished influence for the United States Supreme Court.
The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”

What the wingnuts (and I have no other term that covers all the people who attack the Supreme Court for reading foreign law) do not understand is this: the law of the fifty states is foreign to the federal courts. State law can be persuasive or it cannot, but it is never controlling.

If we reject all foreign law, then the entire basis of our law on English common law must be thrown out. That does not get mentioned much but then the critics have got to know something about our legal system to make the argument. Ginsburg could have made the same comment about The Federalist Papers as she made about law professors. Madison, Jay and Hamilton do not control our Supreme Court but can only be persuasive authority.

Does anyone else wonder why the "last best hope of earth" is so ignored in favor of the Canadians?

What the wingnuts need to ask two questions: 1) was the foreign source reasonable and rational, and 2) was the Supreme Court's use reasonable and rational? Of course, one must be reasonable and rational to ask those questions.

Want to Know How Indiana Spends Its Stimulus Money?

2009-04-13T06:37:00.001-05:00

Check out INvest.IN.gov: Home:

"The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act became law on February 17, 2009. Congress and President Obama have decided to commit $787 billion in spending and tax relief in hopes of stimulating the economy and creating jobs. Governor Daniels has made clear his priorities in carefully using Indiana's portion: jobs and speed."

***

The federal government has established a website, http://www.recovery.gov/, to provide transparency and accountability for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This Indiana Web site, http://INvest.in.gov/ will accomplish the same goal for Hoosiers. It will help Hoosiers know how stimulus funds will be distributed in Indiana and what kinds of projects and programs are eligible for the funds. It also will be used to connect Hoosiers to other resources and provide more information about funds as it becomes available.

Reagan's pal, Thatcher. Conservatism's Wreckage

2009-04-12T07:56:00.003-05:00

I wrote about Ronald Reagan here and today's Sunday Herald published an essay on Margaret Thatcher, Children of the revolution

Thatcherism wasn't just an economic policy, however. It was a social psychology based on possessive individualism. It was about getting as much as possible for yourself and your family and then letting the rest of the world go hang. "There's no such thing as society," she said in her most magisterial soundbite. And while she insists that she didn't mean it literally, actually, she did. She largely succeeded, too, in destroying collectivism, a form of social solidarity that had endured in large parts of Britain since the second world war.

We may not have had collectivism as in the UK but otherwise that does describe the Republican Party's economic policy since Reagan. But think about gated communities, the splitting down into the smallest demographic groups, and the sheer spitefulness of political discourse during the Bush II Administration. How far is the distance between Michael Millikan and junk bonds and AIG or Bernie Madoff? I think not much.

Thatcher sensed intuitively that the key to breaking communitarian ties was home ownership. Before 1979, the sale of council houses had been regarded as a fantasy of the loony right. But she went ahead and did it, and by ushering in the age of mass home ownership - "the property-owning democracy" - she turned Britain into a nation of property speculators. Homes, once just places to live, became assets to be traded, used as private fortresses of personal wealth ... and ultimately, vehicles of speculation by the banks. In 1979, when Thatcher came to power, fewer people in Scotland owned their own homes than in communist Poland. Now, nearly 70% of us are owner-occupiers. Ask long-serving trades unionists why workers are so reluctant to go on strike these days and they will often say: mortgages.

Now that is chilling to think that our current problems started with the subprime mortgage crisis and derivatives. But then American policy has always favored home ownership. Yeah, think about that for a few minutes.

She also ignited the "big bang" in the City of London - a wave of deregulation which opened the way to the "anything goes" era of financial buccaneering. The great mis-selling scandals - endowment mortgages, personal pensions, "with-profits" insurance bonds - all had their origins in the 1980s. Commission-driven "independent" financial advisers developed ever-more ingenious "financial products". One of Thatcher's earliest acts was to break the link between the state pension and average earnings. In future, they would rise with inflation. This apparently technical move ensured that the value of the state pension would wither to next to nothing, forcing people to seek security in private pension provision.

At least we were not dim enough to tie Social Security to the stock market.

And there is a Wagnerian quality, now, to the collapse of Thatcherism and the fall of its gods. The origins of the greatest economic depression in 100 years lay in May 1979 when she became prime minister. The economic engine she created, based on the unrestrained accumulation of wealth and deregulated financial markets, turned into an uncontrollable global juggernaut which has just careered over a cliff. Almost everything that has gone wrong with the neoliberal model - the housing bubble, the bonus culture, fraudulent derivatives, tax havens, financial speculation, the collapse of manufacturing - had their origins in the Thatcher revolution 30 years ago. When David Cameron's Tories today talk of the "broken society" what they are really talking about is the society of rampant individualism and moral anarchy created by their own former leader.

The problems we are dealing with here began long ago. We have all been complicit. Who did not dream of getting rich on the right stock pick? We helped create a house of cards. Unfortunately, we also stored high explosives in that house. One wrong move and the entire world economy goes down the tubes.

Fusion Energy?

2009-04-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

The Next Really Cool Thing - NYTimes.com:

"Last Monday at 3 a.m., for the first time, all 192 lasers were fired at high energy precisely at once — no small feat — at the target chamber’s empty core. That was a major step toward “ignition” — turning that hydrogen pellet into a miniature sun on earth. The next step — which the N.I.F. expects to achieve some time in the next two to three years — is to prove that it can, under lab conditions, repeatedly fire its 192 lasers at multiple hydrogen pellets and produce more energy from the pellets than the laser energy that is injected. That’s called “energy gain.”"

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But, in addition, we need to make a few big bets on potential game-changers. I am talking about systems that could give us abundant, clean, reliable electrons and drive massive innovation in big lasers, materials science, nuclear physics and chemistry that would benefit, energize and renew many U.S. industries.
At the pace we’re going with the technologies we have, without some game-changers, climate change is going to have its way with us. Yes, we’ll still need coal for some time. But let’s make sure that we aren’t just chasing the fantasy that we can “clean up” coal, when our real future depends on birthing new technologies that can replace it

Talk about your energy independence and economic stimulus.....

Government Business

2009-04-12T06:51:00.000-05:00

Want to start a business in exporting or got a business that wants to export? Check out Export.Gov:

"Looking for a comprehensive overview of how to export? For more than 70 years, A Basic Guide to Exporting has been the resource that businesses have turned to for answers to their questions about how to establish and grow overseas markets for their products and services."